»' '' 

HEROES,  HERO-WORSHIP" 


AND 


THE  HEROIC  IN  HISTORY 


BT 

THOMAS    CARLYLE 


NEW  YORK: 
JOHN     B.     ALDEN,     PUBLISHER, 

1885. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  I. 

PAGE 

THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.   ODIN.    PAGANISM  :  SCANDINAVIAN 

MYTHOLOGY,         ......  5 


LECTURE  II. 
THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.    MOHAMMED:  ISLAM,        .  .  43 

LECTURE  III. 
THE  HERO  AS  POET.    DANTE:  SHAKESPEARE,         .  .  78 

LECTURE  IV. 

THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.      LUTHER  ;  REFORMATION  :  KNOX  ; 

PURITANISM,         ......         Ill 

LECTURE  V. 

THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OP  LETTERS.    JOHNSON,  ROUSSEAU, 

BURNS,       .......         147 

LECTURE  VI. 

THE  HERO  AS  KING.    CROMWELL,   NAPOLEON:   MODERN 

REVOLUTIONISM,  ......          185 

SUMMARY,  ....... 

IXDFA-,       .  . 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 


LECTURE  L 

THE  HEEO  AS  DIVINITY.    ODIN.    PAGANISM  :    SCANDINAVIAN  MYTHOLOGY. 
[Tuesday,  5th  May,  1840.] 

We  have  undertaken  to  discourse  here  for  a  little  on  great 
men,  their  manner  of  appearance  in  our  world's  business,  how 
they  have  shaped  themselves  in  the  world's  history,  what  ideas 
men  formed  of  them  ;  what  work  they  did  ; — on  heroes, 
namely,  and  on  their  reception  and  performance  ;  what  I  call 
hero-worship  and  the  heroic  in  human  affairs.  Too  evidently 
this  is  a  large  topic  ;  deserving  quite  another  treatment  than 
we  can  expect  to  give  it  at  present.  A  large  topic  ;  indeed,  an 
illimitable  one  ;  wide  as  universal  history  itself.  For,  as  I 
take  it,  universal  history,  the  history  of  what  man  has  ac- 
complished in  this  world,  is  at  bottom  the  history  of  the  great 
men  who  have  worked  here.  They  were  the  leaders  of  men, 
these  great  ones  ;  the  modelers,  patterns,  and  in  a  wide  sense 
creators,  of  whatsoever  the  general  mass  of  men  contrived  to 
do  or  to  attain  ;  all  things  that  we  see  standing  accomplished 
in  the  world  are  properly  the  outer  material  result,  the  prac- 
tical realization  and  embodiment,  of  thoughts  that  dwelt  in 
the  great  men  sent  into  the  world :  the  soul  of  the  whole 
world's  history,  it  may  justly  be  considered,  were  the  history 
of  these.  Too  clearly  it  is  a  topic  we  shall  do  no  justice  to 
in  this  place  ! 

One  comfort  is,  that  great  men,  taken  up  in  any  way,  are 


6  HEROES  AND  IIERO-  WORSHIP. 

profitable  company.  Wo  cannot  look,  however  imperfectly, 
upon  a  great  man,  without  gaining  something  by  him.  He 
is  the  living  light -fountain,  which  it  is  good  and  pleasant  to 
be  near.  The  light  which  enlightens,  which  has  enlightened 
the  darkness  of  the  world  ;  and  this  not  as  a  kindled  lamp 
only,  but  rather  as  a  natural  luminary  shining  by  the  gift  of 
heaven  ;  a  flowing  light-fountain,  as  I  say,  of  native  original 
insight,  of  manhood  and  heroic  nobleness  ;  in  whose  radiance 
all  souls  feel  that  it  is  well  with  them.  On  any  terms  what- 
soever, you  will  not  grudge  to  wander  in  such  neighborhood 
for  a  while.  These  six  classes  of  heroes,  chosen  out  of  widely- 
distant  countries  and  epochs,  and  in  mere  external  figure 
differing  altogether,  ought,  if  we  look  faithfully  at  them,  to 
illustrate  several  things  for  us.  Could  we  see  them  well,  we 
should  get  some  glimpses  into  the  very  marrow  of  the  world's 
history.  How  happy,  could  I  but,  in  any  measure,  in  such 
times  as  these,  make  manifest  to  you  the  meanings  of  hero- 
ism ;  the  divine  relation  (for  I  may  well  call  it  such),  which 
in  all  times  unites  a  great  man  to  other  men  ;  and  thus,  as  it 
were,  not  exhaust  my  subject,  but  so  much  as  break  ground 
011  it !  At  all  events,  I  must  make  the  attempt. 

It  is  well  said,  in  every  sense,  that  a  man's  religion  is  the 
chief  fact  with  regard  to  him.  A  man's,  or  a  nation  of  men's. 
By  religion  I  do  not  mean  here  the  church-creed  which  he 
professes,  the  articles  of  faith  which  he  will  sign  and,  in  words 
or  otherwise,  assert ;  not  this  wholly,  in  many  cases  not  tin's 
at  all.  We  see  men  of  all  kinds  of  professed  creeds  attain  to 
almost  all  degrees  of  worth  or  worthlessness  under  each  or 
any  of  them.  This  is  not  what  I  call  religion,  this  profession 
and  assertion  ;  which  is  often  only  a  profession  and  assertion 
from  the  outworks  of  the  man,  from  the  mere  argumentative 
region  of  him,  if  even  so  deep  as  that.  But  the  thing  a  man 
does  practically  believe  (and  this  is  often  enough  without  as- 
serting it  even  to  himself,  much  less  to  others);  the  thing  a 
man  docs  practically  lay  to  heart,  and  know  for  certain  ;  con- 
cerning his  vital  relations  to  this  mysterious  universe,  and  his 
duty  and  destiny  there,  that  is  in  all  cases  the  primary  thing 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  7 

for  him,  and  creatively  determines  all  the  rest.  That  is  his 
religion  ;  or,  it  may  be,  his  mere  skepticism  and  no  religion  : 
the  manner  it  is  in  which  he  feels  himself  to  be  spiritually 
related  to  the  unseen  world  or  no  world  ;  and  I  say,  if  you 
tell  me  what  that  is,  you  tell  me  to  a  very  great  extent  what 
the  man  is,  what  the  kind  of  things  he  will  do  is.  Of  a  man 
or  of  a  nation  we  inquire,  therefore,  first  of  all,  what  religion 
they  had?  Was  it  heathenism, — plurality  of  gods,  mere  sen- 
suous representation  of  this  mystery  of  life,  and  for  chief  rec- 
ognized clement  therein  physical  force  ?  Was  it  Christian- 
ism  ;  faith  in  an  invisible,  not  as  real  only,  but  as  the  only 
reality ;  time,  through  every  meanest  moment  of  it,  resting 
on  eternity  ;  pagan  empire  of  force  displaced  by  a  nobler 
supremacy,  that  of  holiness?  Was  it  skepticism,  uncer- 
tainty and  inquiry  whether  there  was  an  unseen  world,  any 
mystery  of  life  except  a  mad  one  ; — doubt  as  to  all  this,  or 
perhaps  unbelief  and  flat  denial  ?  Answering  of  this  ques- 
tion is  giving  us  the  soul  of  the  history  of  the  man  or  nation. 
The  thoughts  they  had  were  the  parents  of  the  actions  they 
did  ;  their  feelings  were  parents  of  their  thoughts :  it  was 
the  unseen  and  spiritual  in  them  that  determined  the  out- 
ward and  the  actual ; — their  religion,  as  I  say,  was  the  great 
fact  about  them.  In  these  discourses,  limited  as  we  are,  it 
will  be  good  to  direct  our  survey  chiefly  to  that  religious 
phasis  of  the  matter.  That  once  known  well,  all  is  known. 
We  have  chosen  as  the  first  hero  in  our  series,  Odin,  the  cen- 
tral figure  of  Scandinavian  paganism  ;  an  emblem  to  us  of  a 
most  extensive  province  of  things.  Let  us  look  for  a  little  at 
the  hero  as  divinity,  the  oldest  primary  form  of  heroism. 

Surely  it  seems  a  very  strange-looking  thing  this  paganism  ; 
almost  inconceivable  to  us  in  these  days.  A  bewildering,  in- 
extricable jungle  of  delusions,  confusions,  falsehoods  and  ab- 
surdities, covering  the  whole  field  of  life  !  A  thing  that  fills 
us  with  astonishment,  almost,  if  it  were  possible,  with  incre- 
dulity,— for  truly  it  is  not  easy  to  understand  that  sane  men 
could  ever  calmly,  with  their  eyes  open,  believe  and  live  by 
such  a  set  of  doctrines.  That  men  should  have  worshiped 
their  poor  fellow-man  as  a  God,  and  not  him  only,  but  stocks 


HEROES  AND  HERO- WORSHIP. 

and  stones,  and  all  manner  of  animate  and  inanimate  objects  ; 
and  fashioned  for  themselves  such  a  distracted  chaos  of  hallu- 
cinations by  way  of  theory  of  the  universe  :  all  this  looks  like 
an  incredible  fable.  Nevertheless  it  is  a  clear  fact  that  they 
did  it  Such  hideous  inextricable  jungle  of  inisworships, 
misbeliefs,  men,  made  as  we  are,  did  actually  hold  by,  and 
live  at  home  in.  This  is  strange.  Yes,  we  may  pause  in  sor- 
row and  silence  over  the  depths  of  darkness  that  are  in  man  ; 
if  we  rejoice  in  the  heights  of  purer  vision  he  has  attained  to. 
Such  things  were  and  are  in  man  ;  in  all  men  ;  in  us  too. 

Some  speculators  have  a  short  way  of  accounting  for  the 
Pagan  religion :  mere  quackery,  priestcraft,  and  dupery,  say 
they ;  no  sane  man  ever  did  believe  it, — merely  contrived  to 
persuade  other  men,  not  worthy  of  the  name  of  sane,  to  be- 
lieve it !  It  will  be  often  our  duty  to  protest  against  this  sort 
of  hypothesis  about  men's  doings  and  history  ;  and  I  here,  on 
the  very  threshold,  protest  against  it  in  reference  to  Paganism, 
and  to  all  other  isms  by  which  man  has  ever  for  a  length  of 
time  striven  to  walk  in  this  world.  They  have  all  had  a  truth 
in  them,  or  men  would  not  have  taken  them  up.  Quackery 
and  dupery  do  abound ;  in  religions,  above  all  in  the  more 
advanced  decaying  stages  of  religions,  they  have  fearfully 
abounded  ;  but  quackery  was  never  the  originating  influence 
in  such  things  ;  it  was  not  the  health  and  life  of  such  things, 
but  their  disease,  the  sure  precursor  of  their  being  about  to 
die  !  Let  us  never  forget  this.  It  seems  to  me  a  most  mourn- 
ful hypothesis,  that  of  quackery  giving  birth  to  any  faith  even 
in  savage  men.  Quackery  gives  birth  to  nothing ;  gives  death 
to  all  things.  We  shall  not  see  into  the  true  heart  of  any- 
thing, if  we  look  merely  at  the  quackeries  of  it :  if  we  do  not 
reject  the  quackeries  altogether ;  as  mere  diseases,  corrup- 
tions, with  which  our  and  all  men's  sole  duty  is  to  have  done 
with  them,  to  sweep  them  out  of  our  thoughts  as  out  of  our 
practice.  Man  everywhere  is  the  born  enemy  of  lies.  I  find 
grand  Lamaism  itself  to  have  a  kind  of  truth  in  it.  Read 
the  candid,  clear-sighted,  rather  skeptical  Mr.  Turner's  "  Ac- 
count of  his  Embassy  "  to  that  country,  and  see.  They  have 
their  belief,  these  poor  Thibet  people,  that  Providence  sends 


THE  HERO  AS  D1VINITT.  9 

down  always  an  incarnation  of  himself  into  every  generation. 
At  bottom  some  belief  in  a  kind  of  Pope !  At  bottom  still 
better,  belief  that  there  is  a  greatest  man  ;  that  he  is  discov- 
erable ;  that,  once  discovered,  we  ought  to  treat  him  with  an 
obedience  which  knows  no  bounds !  This  is  the  truth  of  grand 
Limaism ;  "  discoverability  "  is  the  only  error  here.  The  Thibet 
priests  have  methods  of  their  own  of  discovering  what  man  is 
greatest,  fit  to  be  supreme  over  them.  Bad  methods  :  but  are 
they  so  much  worse  than  our  methods, — of  understanding  him 
to  be  always  the  eldest-born  of  a  certain  genealogy  ?  Alas,  it 
is  a  difficult  thing  to  find  good  methods  for ! We  shall  be- 
gin to  have  a  chance  of  understanding  Paganism,  when  we 
first  admit  that  to  its  followers  it  was,  at  one  time,  earnestly 
true.  Let  us  consider  it  very  certain  that  men  did  believe  in 
Paganism  ;  men  with  open  eyes,  sound  senses,  men  made  al- 
together like  ourselves  ;  that  we,  had  we  been  there,  should 
have  believed  in  it.  Ask  now,  what  Paganism  could  have 
been? 

Another  theory,  somewhat  more  respectable,  attributes  such 
things  to  allegory.  It  was  a  play 'of  poetic  minds,  say  these 
theorists  ;  a  shadowing  forth,  in  allegorical  fable,  in  personifi- 
cation and  visual  form,  of  what  such  poetic  minds  had  known 
and  felt  of  this  universe.  Which  agrees,  add  they,  with  a 
primary  law  of  human  nature,  still  everywhere  observably  at 
work,  though  in  less  important  things,  that  what  a  man  feels 
intensely,  he  struggles  to  speak-out  of  him,  to  see  represented 
before  him  in  visual  shape,  and  as  if  with  a  kind  of  life  and 
historical  reality  in  it.  Now  doubtless  there  is  such  a  law, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  deepest  in  human  nature  ;  neither  need 
we  doubt  that  it  did  operate  fundamentally  in  this  business. 
The  hypothesis  which  ascribes  Paganism  wholly  or  mostly  to 
this  agency,  I  call  a  little  more  respectable  ;  but  I  cannot  yet 
call  it  the  true  hypothesis.  Think,  would  we  believe,  and  take 
with  us  as  our  life-guidance,  an  allegory,  a  poetic  sport  ?  Not 
sport  but  earnest  is  what  we  should  require.  It  is  a  most 
earnest  thing  to  be  alive  in  this  world  ;  to  die  is  not  sport  for 
a  man.  Man's  life  never  was  a  sport  to  him  ;  it  was  a  stem 
reality,  altogether  a  serious  matter  to  be  alive  I 


10  HEROES  AND  HERO- WORSHIP. 

I  find,  therefore,  that  though  these  allegory  theorists  are  on 
the  way  towards  truth  in  this  matter,  they  have  not  reached 
it  either.  Pagan  religion  is  indeed  an  allegory,  a  symbol  of 
what  men  felt  and  knew  about  the  universe  ;  and  all  religions 
are  symbols  of  that,  altering  always  as  that  alters :  but  it  seems 
to  me  a  radical  perversion,  and  even  inversion,  of  the  business, 
to  put  that  forward  as  the  origin  and  moving  cause,  when  it 
was  rather  the  result  and  termination.  To  get  beautiful  alle- 
gories, a  perfect  poetic  symbol,  was  not  the  want  of  men ;  but 
to  know  what  they  were  to  believe  about  this  universe,  what 
course  they  were  to  steer  in  it ;  what,  in  this  mysterious  life 
of  theirs,  they  had  to  hope  and  to  fear,  to  do  and  to  forbear 
doing.  The  "  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  is  an  allegory,  and  a  beau- 
tiful, just  and  serious  one  :  but  consider  whether  Bunyan's  al- 
legory could  have  preceded  the  faith  it  symbolizes  !  The  faith 
had  to  be  already  there,  standing  believed  by  everybody  ; — 
of  which  the  allegory  could  then  become  a  shadow  ;  and,  with 
all  its  seriousness,  we  may  say  a  sportful  shadow,  a  mere  play 
of  the  fancy,  in  comparison  with  that  awful  fact  and  scientific 
certainty  wk,ich  it  poetically  strives  to  emblem.  The  allegory 
is  the  product  of  the  certainty,  not  the  producer  of  it ;  not  in 
Buuyan's  nor  in  any  other  case.  For  Paganism,  therefore, 
we  have  still  to  inquire,  whence  came  that  scientific  certainty, 
the  parent  of  such  a  bewildered  heap  of  allegories,  errors  and 
confusions  ?  How  was  it,  what  was  it  ? 

Surely  it  were  a  foolish  attempt  to  pretend  "  explaining," 
in  this  place,  or  in  any  place,  such  a  phenomenon  as  that  far- 
distant  distracted  cloudy  imbroglio  of  Paganism, — more  like 
a  cloudfield  than  a  distant  continent  of  firm  land  and  facts ! 
It  is  no  longer  a  reality,  yet  it  was  one.  We  ought  to  under- 
stand that  this  seeming  cloudfield  was  once  a  reality  ;  that 
not  poetic  allegory,  least  of  all  that  dupery  and  deception  was 
the  origin  of  it.  Men,  I  say,  never  did  believe  idle  songs,  never 
risked  their  soul's  life  on  allegories  ;  men  in  all  times,  espe- 
cially in  early  earnest  times,  have  had  an  instinct  for  detecting 
quacks,  for  detesting  quacks.  Let  us  try  if,  leaving  out  both 
the  quack  theory  and  the  allegory  one,  and  listening  with 
affectionate  attention  to  that  far-off  confused  rumor  of  the 


THE  IIERO  AS  DIVINITY.  11 

Pagan  ages,  we  cannot  ascertain  so  much  as  this  at  least,  that 
there  was  a  kind  of  fact  at  the  heart  of  them  ;  that  they  too 
were  not  mendacious  and  distracted,  but  in  their  own  poor 
way  true  and  sane  ! 

You  remember  that  fancy  of  Plato's,  of  a  man  who  had 
grown  to  maturity  in  some  dark  distance,  and  was  brought 
on  a  sudden  into  the  upper  air  to  see  the  sun  rise.  What 
would  his  wonder  be,  his  rapt  astonishment  at  the  sight  we 
daily  witness  with  indifference  !  With  the  free  open  sense  of 
a  child,  yet  with  the  ripe  faculty  of  a  man,  his  whole  heart 
would  be  kindled  by  that  sight,  he  would  discern  it  well  to 
be  godlike,  his  soul  would  fall  down  in  worship  before  it. 
Now,  just  such  a  childlike  greatness  was  in  the  primitive  na- 
tions. The  first  pagan  thinker  among  rude  men,  the  first  man 
that  began  to  think,  was  precisely  this  child-man  of  Plato's. 
Simple,  open  as  a  child,  yet  with  the  depth  and  strength  of  a 
man.  Nature  had  as  yet  no  name  to  him  ;  he  had  not  yet 
united  under  a  name  the  infinite  variety  of  sights,  sounds, 
shapes  and  motions,  which  we  now  collectively  name  universe, 
nature,  or  the  like, — and  so  with  a  name  dismiss  it  from  us. 
To  the  wild  deep-hearted  man  all  was  yet  new,  not  veiled  un- 
der names  or  formulas  ;  it  stood  naked,  flashing-in  on  him 
there,  beautiful,  awful,  unspeakable.  Nature  was  to  this  man, 
what  to  the  thinker  and  prophet  it  forever  is,  preternatural. 
This  green  flowery  rock-built  earth,  the  trees,  the  mountains, 
rivers,  many-sounding  seas  ; — that  great  deep  sea  of  azure 
that  swims  overhead  ;  the  winds  sweeping  through  it ;  the 
black  cloud  fashioning  itself  together,  now  pouring  out  fire, 
now  hail  and  rain ;  what  is  it  ?  Ay,  what  ?  At  bottom  we 
do  not  yet  know  ;  we  can  never  know  at  all.  It  is  not  by  our 
superior  insight  that  we  escape  the  difficulty ;  it  is  by  our 
superior  levity,  our  inattention,  our  want  of  insight.  It  is  by 
not  thinking  that  we  cease  to  wonder  at  it.  Hardened  round 
us,  encasing  wholly  every  notion  we  form,  is  a  wrappage  of 
traditions,  hearsays ;  mere  words.  We  call  that  fire  of  the 
black  thunder-cloud  "  electricity,"  and  lecture  learnedly  about 
it,  and  grind  the  like  of  it  out  of  glass  and  silk  ;  but  what  is 


12  UEROE8  AND  UERO-  WORSHIP. 

it  ?  What  made  it  ?  Whence  comes  it  ?  Whither  goes  it  ? 
Science  has  clone  much  for  us ;  but  it  is  a  poor  science  that 
would  hide  from  us  the  great  deep  sacred  infinitude  of  Nes- 
cience, whither  we  can  never  penetrate,  on  which  all  science 
swims  as  a  mere  superficial  film.  This  world,  after  all  our 
science  and  sciences,  is  still  a  miracle ;  wonderful,  inscrutable, 
magical  and  more,  to  whosoever  will  think  of  it. 

That  great  mystery  of  TIME,  were  there  no  other ;  the  illim- 
itable, silent,  never-resting  thing  called  time,  rolling,  rushing 
on,  swift,  silent,  like  an  all-embracing  ocean-tide,  on  which 
we  and  all  the  universe  SAvim  like  exhalations,  like  apparitions 
which  are,  and  then  are  not :  this  is  forever  veiy  literally  a 
miracle  ;  a  thing  to  strike  us  dumb, — for  we  have  no  word  to 
speak  about  it.  This  universe,  ah  me — what  could  the  wild 
man  know  of  it ;  what  can  we  yet  know  ?  That  it  is  a  force, 
and  thousandfold  complexity  of  forces  ;  a  force  which  is  not 
we.  That  is  all ;  it  is  not  we,  it  is  altogether  different  from 
us.  Force,  force,  everywhere  force  :  we  ourselves  a  mysteri- 
ous force  in  the  centre  of  that.  "  There  is  not  a  leaf  rotting 
on  the  highway  but  has  force  in  it ;  how  else  could  it  rot  ?  " 
Nay  surely,  to  the  atheistic  thinker,  if  such  a  one  were  possi- 
ble, it  must  be  a  miracle  too,  this  huge  illimitable  whirlwind 
of  force,  which  envelops  us  here  ;  never-resting  whirlwind, 
high  as  immensity,  old  as  eternity.  What  ia  it  ?  God's  crea- 
tion, the  religious  people  answer  ;  it  is  the  Almighty  God's ! 
Atheistic  science  babbles  poorly  of  it,  with  scientific  nomen- 
clatures, experiments  and  what-not,  as  if  it  were  a  poor  dead 
thing,  to  be  bottled-up  in  Leyden  jars  and  sold  over  counters  ; 
but  the  natural  sense  of  man,  in  all  times,  if  he  will  honestly 
apply  his  sense,  proclaims  it  to  be  a  living  thing, — ah,  an  un- 
speakable, godlike  thing  ;  toward  which  the  best  attitude  for 
us,  after  never  so  much  science,  is  awe,  devout  prostration  and 
humility  of  soul ;  worship  if  not  in  words,  then  in  silence. 

But  now  I  remark  farther :  What  in  such  a  time  as  ours  it 
requires  a  prophet  or  poet  to  teach  us,  namely,  the  stripping- 
off  of  those  poor  midevout  wrappages,  nomenclatures  and 
scientific  hearsays, — this,  the  ancient  earnest  soul,  as  yet  un- 
encumbered with  these  things,  did  for  itself.  The  world, 


777^  JIEEO  AS  DIVINITY.  13 

which  is  now  divine  only  to  the  gifted,  was  then  divine  to 
whosoever  would  turn  his  eye  upon  it.  He  stood  bare  before 
it  face  to  face.  "All  was  Godlike  or  God  : " — Jean  Paul  still 
finds  it  so  ;  the  giant,  Jean  Paul,  who  has  power  to  escape  out 
of  hearsays :  but  there  then  were  no  hearsays.  Canopus  shin- 
ing down  over  the  desert,  with  its  blue  diamond  brightness 
(that  wild  blue  spirit-like  brightness,  far  brighter  than  we 
ever  witness  here),  would  pierce  into  the  heart  of  the  wild 
Ishmaelitish  man,  whom  it  was  guiding  through  the  solitary 
waste  there.  To  his  wild  heart,  with  all  feelings  in  it,  with 
no  speech  for  any  feeling,  it  may  seem  a  little  eye,  that  Cano- 
pus, glancing-out  on  him  from  the  great  deep  eternity ;  re- 
vealing the  inner  splendor  to  him.  Cannot  we  understand 
how  these  men  worshiped  Canopus  :  became  what  we  call 
Sabeans,  worshiping  the  stars  ?  Such  is  to  me  the  secret  of 
all  forms  of  paganism.  Worship  is  transcendent  wonder  ; 
wonder  for  which  there  is  now  no  limit  or  measure  ;  that  is 
worship.  To  these  primeval  men,  all  things  and  everything 
they  saw  exist  beside  them  were  an  emblem  of  the  Godlike, 
of  some  God. 

And  look  what  perennial  fibre  of  truth  was  in  that.  To  us 
also,  through  every  star,  through  every  blade  of  grass,  is  not 
a  God  made  visible,  if  we  will  open,  our  minds  and  eyes  ?  We 
do  not  worship  in  that  way  now ;  but  is  it  not  reckoned  still 
a  merit,  proof  of  what  we  call  a  "poetic  nature,"  that  we 
recognize  how  every  object  has  a  divine  beauty  in  it ;  how 
every  object  still  verily  is  "  a  window  through  which  we  may 
look  into  infinitude  itself  ?  "  He  that  can  discern  the  loveli- 
ness of  things,  we  call  him  poet,  painter,  man  of  genius,  gifted, 
lovable.  These  poor  Sabeans  did  even  what  he  does, — in  their 
own  fashion.  That  they  did  it,  in  what  fashion  soever,  was  a 
merit :  better  than  what  the  entirely  stupid  man  did,  what 
the  horse  and  camel  did, — namely,  nothing ! 

But  now  if  all  things  whatsoever  that  we  look  upon  are  em- 
blems to  us  of  the  highest  God,  I  add  that  more  so  than  any 
of  them  is  man  such  an  emblem.  You  have  heard  of  St.  Chry- 
sostom's  celebrated  saying  in  reference  to  the  Shekinah,  or 
ark  of  testimony,  visible  revelation  with  God,  among  the  Ho- 


14         HEROES  AND  HERO-  WORSHIP. 

brews  :  "  The  true  Shekinah  is  man  ! "  Yes,  it  is  even  so ; 
this  is  no  vain  phrase  ;  it  is  veritably  so.  The  essence  of  .our 
being,  the  mystery  in  us  that  calls  itself  "I," — ah,  what  words 
have  we  for  such  tilings  ? — is  a  breath  of  heaven  ;  the  highest 
being  reveals  himself  in  man.  This  body,  these  faculties,  this 
life  of  ours,  is  it  not  all  as  a  vesture  for  that  unnamed  ? 
"There  is  but  one  temple  in  the  universe,"  says  the  devout 
Novalis,  "and  that  is  the  body  of  man.  Nothing  is  holier 
than  that  high  form.  Bending  before  men  is  a  reverence 
done  to  this  revelation  in  the  flesh.  We  touch  heaven  when 
we  lay  our  hand  on  a  human  body ! "  This  sounds  much  like 
a  mere  flourish  of  rhetoric  ;  but  it  is  not  so.  If  well  medi- 
tated, it  will  turn  out  to  be  a  scientific  fact ;  the  expression, 
in  such  words  as  can  be  had,  of  the  actual  truth  of  the  thing. 
We  are  the  miracle  of  miracles, — the  great  inscrutable  mys- 
tery of  God.  We  cannot  understand  it,  we  know  not  how  to 
speak  of  it ;  but  we  may  feel  and  know,  if  we  like,  that  it  is 
verily  so. 

Well ;  these  truths  were  once  more  readily  felt  than  now. 
The  young  generations  of  the  world,  who  had  in  them  the 
freshness  of  young  children,  and  yet  the  depth  of  earnest 
men,  who  did  not  think  that  they  had  finished-off  all  things 
in  heaven  and  earth  by  merely  giving  them  scientific  names, 
but  had  to  gaze  direct  at  them  there,  with  awe  and  wonder ; 
they  felt  better  what  of  divinity  is  in  man  and  nature  ; — they, 
without  being  mad,  could  worship  nature,  and  man  more  than 
anything  else  in  nature.  Worship,  that  is,  as  I  said  above, 
admire  without  limit :  this,  in  the  full  use  of  their  faculties, 
with  all  sincerity  of  heart,  they  could  do.  I  consider  hero- 
worship  to  be  the  grand  modifying  element  in  that  ancient 
system  of  thought.  What  I  called  the  perplexed  jungle  of 
paganism  sprang,  we  may  say,  out  of  many  roots :  every  ad- 
miration, adoration  of  a  star  or  natural  object  was  a  root  or 
fibre  of  a  root ;  but  hero-worship  is  the  deepest  root  of  all ; 
the  tap-root,  from  which  in  great  degree  all  the  rest  were 
nourished  and  grown. 

And  now  if  worship  even  of  a  star  had  some  meaning  in  it, 
how  much  more  might  that  of  a  hero !  Worship  of  a  hero  is 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  15 

transcendent  admiration  of  a  great  man.  I  say  great  men  are 
still  admirable  ;  I  say  there  is,  at  bottom,  nothing  else  admi- 
rable !  No  nobler  feeling  than  this  of  admiration  for  one 
higher  than  himself  dwells  in  the  breast  of  man.  It  is  to  this 
hour,  and  at  all  hours,  the  vivifying  influence  in  man's  life. 
Iteligion  I  find  stand  upon  it ;  not  paganism  only,  but  far  high- 
er and  truer  religions, — all  religion  hitherto  known.  Hero- 
worship,  heartfelt  prostrate  admiration,  submission,  burning, 
boundless,  for  a  noblest  godlike  form  of  man, — is  not  that  the 
germ  of  Christianity  itself  ?  The  greatest  of  all  heroes  is  one 
— whom  we  do  not  name  here  !  Let  sacred  silence  meditate 
that  sacred  matter  ;  you  will  find  it  the  ultimate  perfection  of 
a  principle  extant  throughout  man's  whole  history  on  earth. 

Or  coming  into  lower,  less  unspeakable  provinces,  is  not  all 
loyalty  akin  to  religious  faith  also?  Faith  is  loyalty  to  some 
inspired  teacher,  some  spiritual  hero.  And  what  therefore  is 
loyalty  proper,  the  life-breath  of  all  society,  but  an  effluence 
of  hero-worship,  submissive  admiration  for  the  truly  great  ? 
Society  is  founded  on  hero-worship.  All  dignities  of  rank,  on 
which  human  association  rests,  are  what  we  may  call  a  licro- 
archy  (government  of  heroes), — or  a  hierarchy,  for  it  is  "  sa- 
cred "  enough  withal !  The  duke  means  dux,  leader  ;  king  is 
kon-niny,  kan-ning,  man  that  knows  or  cans.  Society  every- 
where is  some  representation,  not  insupportably  inaccurate, 
of  a  graduated  worship  of  heroes ;  reverence  and  obedience 
done  to  men  really  great  and  wise.  Not  in  supportably  inac- 
curate, I  say !  They  are  all  as  bank-notes,  these  social  digni- 
taries, all  representing  gold  ; — and  several  of  them,  alas,  al- 
ways are  forged  notes.  We  can  do  with  some  forged  false 
notes  ;  with  a  good  many  even  ;  but  not  with  all,  or  the  most 
of  them  forged !  No  :  there  have  to  come  revolutions  then  ; 
cries  of  democracy,  liberty  and  equality,  and  I  know  not  what : 
— the  notes  being  all  false,  and  no  gold  to  be  had  for  them, 
people  take  to  crying  in  their  despair  that  there  is  no  gold, 
that  there  never  was  any ! — "  gold,"  hero-worship,  is  neverthe- 
less, as  it  was  always  and  everywhere,  and  cannot  cease  till 
man  himself  ceases. 

I  am  well  aware  that  in  these  days  hero-worship,  the  thing 


1C  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

I  call  hero-worship,  professes  to  have  gone  out,  and  finally 
ceased.  This,  for  reasons  which  it  will  be  worth  while  some 
time  to  inquire  into,  is  an  age  that  as  it  were  denies  the  exist- 
ence of  great  men ;  denies  the  desirableness  of  great  men. 
Show  our  critics  a  great  man,  a  Luther  for  example,  they  be- 
gin to  what  they  call  "  account "  for  him  ;  not  to  worship 
him,  but  take  the  dimensions  of  him, — and  bring  him  out  to 
bo  a  little  kind  of  man  !  He  was  the  "creature  of  the  time," 
tlwy  say  ;  the  time  called  him  forth,  the  time  did  everything, 
he  nothing — but  what  we  the  little  critic  could  have  done 
too  !  This  seems  to  me  but  melancholy  work.  The  time  call 
forth  ?  Alas,  we  have  known  times  call  loudly  enough  for  their 
great  man  ;  but  not  find  him  when  they  called  !  He  was  not 
there  ;  Providence  had  not  sent  him  ;  the  time,  calling  its 
loudest,  had  to  go  down  to  confusion  and  wreck  because  ho 
would  not  come  when  called. 

For  if  we  will  think  of  it,  no  time  need  have  gone  to  ruin, 
could  it  ]iswe  found  a  man  great  enough,  a  man  wise  and  good 
enough  ;  wisdom  to  discern  truly  what  the  time  wanted,  valor 
to  lead  it  on  the  right  road  thither ;  these  are  the  salvation  of 
any  time.  But  I  liken  common  languid  times,  with  their  un- 
belief, distress,  perplexity,  with  their  languid  doubting  char- 
acters and  embarrassed  circumstances,  impotently  crumbling- 
down  into  ever  worse  distress  towards  final  ruin  ; — ah1  this 
I  liken  to  dry  dead  fuel,  waiting  for  the  lightning  out  of 
heaven  that  shall  kindle  it.  The  great  man,  with  his  free 
force  direct  out  of  God's  own  hand,  is  the  lightning.  His 
word  is  the  wise  healing  word  which  all  can  believe  in.  All 
blazes  round  him  now,  when  he  has  once  struck  on  it,  into 
fire  like  his  own.  The  dry  mouldering  sticks  are  thought  to 
have  called  him  forth.  They  did  want  him  greatly ;  but  as 
to  calling  him  forth — ! — Those  are  critics  of  small  vision,  I 
think,  who  cry  :  "  See,  is  it  not  the  sticks  that  made  the 
fire  ?  "  No  sadder  proof  can  be  given  by  a  man  of  his  own 
littleness  than  disbelief  in  great  men.  There  is  no  sadder 
symptom  of  a  generation  than  such  general  blindness  to  tho 
spiritual  lightning,  with  faith  only  in  the  heap  of  barren  dead 
fuel  It  is  the  last  consummation  of  unbelief.  In  all  epochs 


THE  1IE110  AS  DIVINITY.  17 

of  the  world's  history,  we  shall  find  the  great  man  to  have 
been  the  indispensable  saviour  of  his  epoch  ; — the  lightning, 
without  which  the  fuel  never  would  have  burnt.  The  history 
of  the  world,  I  said  already,  was  the  biography  of  great  men. 
Such  small  critics  do  wrhat  they  can  to  promote  unbelief 
and  universal  spiritual  paralysis  ;  but  happily  they  cannot 
always  completely  succeed.  In  all  times  it  is  possible  for  a 
man  to  arise  great  enough  to  feel  that  they  and  their  doctrines 
are  chimeras  and  cobwebs.  And  what  is  notable,  in  no  time 
whatever  can  Ihey  entirely  eradicate  out  of  living  men's  hearts 
a  certain  altogether  peculiar  reverence  for  great  men  ;  genuine 
admiration,  loyalty,  adoration,  however  dim  and  perverted  it 
may  be.  Hero-worship  endures  forever  while  man  endures. 
Boswell  venerates  his  Johnson,  right  truly  even  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  The  unbelieving  French  believe  in  their  Vol- 
taire ;  and  burst-out  round  him  into  very  curious  hero-wor- 
ship, in  that  last  act  of  his  life  when  they  "  stifle  him  under 
roses."  It  has  always  seemed  to  me  extremely  curious  this  of 
Voltaire.  Truly,  if  Christianity  be  the  highest  instance  of 
hero-worship,  then  we  may  find  here  in  Voltaireism  one  of  the 
lowest !  He  whose  life  was  that  of  a  kind  of  Antichrist,  does 
again  on  this  side  exhibit  a  curious  contrast.  No  people  ever 
were  so  little  prone  to  admire  at  all  as  those  French  of  Vol- 
taire. Pej'siflage  was  the  character  of  their  whole  mind  ;  ado- 
ration had  nowhere  a  place  in  it.  Yet  see !  The  old  man  of 
Forney  comes  up  to  Paris  ;  an  old,  tottering,  infirm  man  of 
eighty-four  years.  They  feel  that  he  too  is  a  kind  of  hero  ; 
that  he  has  spent  his  life  hi  opposing  error  and  injustice,  de- 
livering Calases,  unmasking  hypocrites  in  high  places ; — in 
short  that  he  too,  though  in  a  strange  way,  has  fought  like  a 
valiant  man.  They  feel  withal  that,  if  persiflage  be  the  great 
thing,  there  never  was  such  a  persifteur.  He  is  the  realized 
ideal  of  every  one  of  them  ;  the  thing  they  are  all  wanting  to 
be  ;  of  all  Frenchman  the  most  French.  He  is  properly  their 
god, — such  god  as  they  are  fit  for.  Accordingly  all  persons, 
from  the  queen  Antoinette  to  the  Douanier  at  the  Porte  St. 
Denis,  do  they  not  worship  him  ?  People  of  quality  disguise 
themselves  as  tavern  waiters.  The  Maitre  de  Poste,  with  b 
2 


18  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

broad  oath,  orders  his  postillion,  "  Va  bon  train  ;  thou  art 
driving  M.  de  Voltaire."  At  Paris  his  carriage  is  "  the  nucleus 
of  a  cornet,  whose  train  fills  whole  streets."  The  ladies  pluck 
a  hair  or  two  from  his  fur,  to  keep  it  as  a  sacred  relic.  Thero 
was  nothing  highest,  beautifullest,  noblest  in  all  France,  that 
did  not  feel  this  man  to  be  higher,  beautifuller,  nobler. 

Yes,  from  Norse  Odin  to  English  Samuel  Johnson,  from  tho 
divine  founder  of  Christianity  to  the  withered  pontiff  of  ency- 
clopedism,  in  all  times  and  places,  the  hero  has  been  wor- 
shiped. It  will  ever  be  so.  We  all  love  great  men  ;  love, 
venerate  and  bow  down  submissive  before  great  men  :  nay 
can  we  honestly  bow  down  to  anything  else  ?  Ah,  does  not 
every  true  man  feel  that  he  is  himself  made  higher  by  doing 
reverence  to  what  is  really  above  him  ?  No  nobler  or  more 
blessed  feeling  dwells  in  man's  heart.  And  to  me  it  is  very 
cheering  to  consider  that  no  skeptical  logic,  or  general  trivi- 
ality, insincerity  and  aridity  of  any  time  and  its  influences  can 
destroy  this  noble  inborn  loyalty  and  worship  that  is  in  man. 
In  times  of  unbelief,  which  soon  have  to  become  times  of  rev- 
olution, much  down-rushing,  sorrowful  decay  and  ruin  is  visi- 
ble to  everybody.  For  myself  in  these  days,  I  seem  to  see  in 
this  indestructibility  of  hero-worship  the  everlasting  ada- 
mant lower  than  which  the  confused  wreck  of  revolutionary 
things  cannot  falL  The  confused  wreck  of  things  crumbling 
and  even  crashing  and  tumbling  all  around  us  in  these  revolu- 
tionary ages,  will  get  down  so  far ;  no  farther.  It  is  an  eter- 
nal corner-stone,  from  which  they  can  begin  to  build  them- 
selves up  again.  That  man,  in  some  sense  or  other,  worships 
heroes  ;  that  we  ah1  of  us  reverence  and  must  ever  reverence 
great  men  ;  this  is,  to  me,  the  living  rock  amid  all  rushings- 
down  whatsoever  ; — tho  one  fixed  point  in  modern  revolution- 
ary history,  otherwise  as  if  bottomless  and  shoreless. 

So  much  of  truth,  only  under  an  ancient  obsolete  vesture, 
but  the  spirit  of  it  still  true,  do  I  find  in  the  Paganism  of  old 
nations.  Nature  is  still  divine,  the  revelation  of  the  workings 
of  God ;  the  hero  is  still  worshipablc :  this,  under  poor 
cramped  incipient  forms,  is  what  all  pagan  religious  have 


TUB  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  19 

struggled,  as  they  could,  to  set  forth.  I  think  Scandinavian 
paganism,  to  us  here,  is  more  interesting  than  any  other.  It 
is,  for  one  thing,  the  latest ;  it  continued  in  these  regions  of 
Europe  till  the  eleventh  century  :  eight  hundred  years  ago 
the  Norwegians  were  still  worshipers  of  Odin.  It  is  inter- 
esting also  as  the  creed  of  our  fathers  ;  the  men  whose  blood 
still  runs  in  our  veins,  whom  doubtless  we  still  resemble  in 
so  many  ways.  Strange  :  they  did  believe  that,  while  we  be- 
lieve so  differently.  Let  us  look  a  little  at  this  poor  Norse 
creed,  for  many  reasons.  We  have  tolerable  means  to  do  it ; 
for  there  is  another  point  of  interest  in  these  Scandinavian 
mythologies  :  that  they  have  been  preserved  so  welL 

In  that  strange  island,  Iceland, — burst  up,  the  geologists 
say,  by  fire  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea  ;  a  wild  land  of  bar- 
renness and  lava  ;  swallowed  many  months  of  every  year  in 
black  tempests,  yet  with  a  wild  gleaming  beauty  in  summer- 
time ;  towering  up  there,  stern  and  grim,  in  the  north  ocean  ; 
with  its  snow  jockuls,  roaring  geysers,  sulphur-pools  and 
horrid  volcanic  chasms,  like  the  waste  chaotic  battle-field  of 
frost  and  fire  ; — where  of  all  places  we  least  looked  for  litera- 
ture or  written  memorials,  the  record  of  these  things  was 
written  down.  On  the  seaboard  of  this  wild  land  is  a  rim  of 
grassy  country,  where  cattle  can  subsist,  and  men  by  means 
of  them  and  of  what  the  sea  yields  ;  and  it  seems  they  were 
poetic  men  these,  men  who  had  deep  thoughts  in  them,  and 
uttered  musically  their  thoughts.  Much  would  be  lost,  had 
Iceland  not  been  burst-up  from  the  sea,  not  been  discovered 
by  the  Northmen  !  The  old  Norse  poets  were  many  of  them 
natives  of  Iceland. 

Saernund,  one  of  the  early  Christian  priests  there,  who  per- 
haps had  a  lingering  fondness  for  paganism,  coUected  certain 
of  their  old  pagan  songs,  just  about  becoming  obsolete  then, 
— poems  or  chants  of  a  mythic,  prophetic,  mostly  all  of  a  relig- 
ious character :  that  is  what  Norse  critics  call  the  elthr  or 
poetic  edda.  Edda,  a  word  of  uncertain  etymology,  is  thought 
to  signify  ancestress.  Snorro  Sturleson,  an  Iceland  gentle- 
man, an  extremely  notable  personage,  educated  by  this  Sa> 
rnund's  grandson,  took  in  hand  next,  near  a  century  after- 


20  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

wards,  to  put  together,  among  several  other  books  ho  wrote, 
a  kind  of  prose  synopsis  of  the  whole  mythology  ;  elucidated 
by  new  fragments  of  traditionary  verse.  A  work  constructed 
really  with  great  ingenuity,  native  talent,  what  one  might  call 
unconscious  art ;  altogether  a  perspicuous  clear  work,  pleas- 
ant reading  still :  this  is  the  younger  or  prose  edda.  By  these 
and  the  numerous  other  sagas,  mostly  Icelandic,  with  the  com- 
mentaries, Icelandic  or  not,  which  go  on  zealously  in  the 
north  to  this  day,  it  is  possible  to  gain  some  direct  insight 
even  yet ;  and  see  that  old  Norse  system  of  belief,  as  it  were, 
face  to  face.  Let  us  forget,  that  it  is  erroneous  religion  ;  let 
us  look  at  it  as  old  thought,  and  try  if  we  cannot  sympathize 
with  it  somewhat. 

The  primary  characteristic  of  this  old  northland  mythology 
I  find  to  be  impersonation  of  the  visible  workings  of  nature. 
Earnest  simple  recognition  of  the  workings  of  physical  nat- 
ure, as  a  thing  wholly  miraculous,  stupendous  and  divine. 
What  we  now  lecture  of  as  science,  they  wondered  at,  and  fell 
down  in  awe  before,  as  religion.  The  dark  hostile  powers  of 
nature  they  figure  to  themselves  as  "Jdtuns,"  giants,  huge 
shaggy  beings  of  a  demonic  character.  Frost,  fire,  sea- 
tempest  ;  these  are  Jotuns.  The  friendly  powers  again,  as 
summer-heat,  the  sun,  are  gods.  The  empire  of  tlu's  universe 
is  divided  between  these  two ;  they  dwell  apart,  in  perennial 
internecine  feud.  The  gods  dweh1  above  in  Asgard,  the  gar- 
den of  the  Asen,  or  Divinities :  Jutunheim,  a  distant  dark 
chaotic  land,  is  the  home  of  the  Jotuns. 

Curious  ah1  this  ;  and  not  idle  or  inane,  if  we  will  look  at 
the  foundation  of  it !  The  power  of  fire,  or  Jlame,  for  in- 
stance, which  wo  designate  by  some  ti'ivial  chemical  name, 
thereby  hiding  from  ourselves  the  essential  character  of  won- 
der that  dwells  in  it  as  in  all  things,  is  with  these  old  north- 
men,  Loke,  a  most  swift  subtle  demon,  of  the  brood  of  the 
Jutuns.  The  savages  of  the  Ladrones  islands  too  (say  some 
Spanish  voyagers)  thought  fire,  which  they  never  had  seen  be- 
fore, was  a  devil  or  god,  that  bit  you  sharply  when  you 
touched  it,  and  that  lived  upon  dry  wood.  From  us  too  no 
chemistry,  if  it  had  not  stupidity  to  help  it,  would  hide  that 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  21 

flame  is  a  wonder.  What  is  fiarne  ? — Frost  the  old  Norse  seer 
discerns  to  be  a  monstrous  hoary  Jotun,  the  giant,  Thrym, 
Hnjm  ;  or  Rime,  the  old  word  now  nearly  obsolete  here,  but 
still  used  in  Scotland  to  signify  hoar-frost,  liime  was  not 
then  as  now  a  dead  chemical  thing,  but  a  living  Jotun  or 
devil ;  the  monstrous  Jotun  Rime  drove  home  his  horses  at 
night,  sat  "combing  their  manes," — which  horses  were  Hail- 
clouds,  or  fleet  frost-winds.  His  cows — no,  not  his,  but  a 
kinsman's,  the  giant  Hymir's  cows  are  icebergs :  this  Hymir 
"  looks  at  the  rocks  "  with  his  devil-eye,  and  they  split  in  the 
glance  of  it. 

Thunder  was  not  then  mere  electricity,  vitreous  or  resinous ; 
it  was  the  god  Conner  (Thunder)  or  Thor, — god  also  of  benefi- 
cent summer-heat.  The  thunder  was  his  wrath  ;  the  gather- 
ing of  the  black  clouds  is  the  drawing-down  of  Thor's  angry 
brows ;  the  fire-bolt  bursting  out  of  heaven  is  the  all-rending 
hammer  flung  from  the  hand  of  Thor  :  he  urges  his  loud 
chariot  over  the  mountain  tops, — that  is  the  peal ;  wrathful  ho 
"  blows  in  his  red  beard," — that  is  the  rustling  stormblast  be- 
fore the  thunder  begin.  Balder  again,  the  white  god,  the 
beautiful,  the  just  and  benignant  (whom  the  early  Christian 
missionaries  found  to  resemble  Christ),  is  the  sun, — beauti- 
fullest  of  visible  things  ;  wondrous  too,  and  divine  still,  after 
ah1  our  astronomies  and  almanacs !  But  perhaps  the  notablest 
god  we  hear  tell-of  is  one  of  whom  Grimm  the  German  ety- 
mologist finds  trace :  the  god  Wunsch,  or  wish.  The  god 
Wish  ;  who  could  give  us  all  that  we  wished  !  Is  not  this  tho 
sincerest  and  yet  rudest  voice  of  the  spirit  of  man  ?  Tho 
rudest  ideal  that  man  ever  formed  ;  which  still  shows  itself  in 
the  latest  forms  of  our  spiritual  culture.  Higher  considera- 
tions have  to  teach  us  that  the  god  Wish  is  not  the  true 
God. 

Of  the  other  gods  or  Jotuns  I  will  mention  only  for  etymol- 
ogy's sake,  that  sea-tempest  is  the  Jotun  Aegir,  a  very  danger- 
ous Jotun  ; — and  now  to  this  day,  on  our  river  Trent,  as  I  learn, 
the  Nottingham  bargemen,  when  the  river  is  in  a  certain 
flooded  state  (a  kind  of  backwater,  or  eddying  swirl  it  has, 
very  dangerous  to  them),  call  it  Eager ;  they  cry  out,  "Have 


22  HEROES  AND  I1ERO  -  WORSHIP. 

a  care,  there  is  the  Eager  coming  !  "  Curious  ;  that  word  sur- 
viving, like  the  peak  of  a  submerged  world  !  The  oldest  Not- 
tingham bargemen  had  believed  in  the  god  Aegir.  Indeed 
our  English  blood  too  in  good  part  is  Danish,  Norse  ;  or  rather, 
at  bottom,  Danish  and  Norse  and  Saxon  have  no  distinction, 
except  a  superficial  one, — as  of  Heathen  and  Christian,  or  the 
like.  But  all  over  our  island  we  are  mingled  largely  with 
Danes  proper, — from  the  incessant  invasions  there  were  :  and 
this,  of  course,  in  a  greater  proportion  along  the  east  coast ; 
and  greatest  of  all,  as  I  find,  in  the  north  country.  From  the 
Humber  upwards,  all  over  Scotland,  the  speech  of  the  com- 
mon people  is  still  in  a  singular  degree  Icelandic  ;  its  German- 
ism has  still  a  peculiar  Norse  tinge.  They  too  are  "  Normans," 
Northmen, — if  that  be  any  great  beauty  ! — 

Of  the  chief  god,  Odin,  we  shall  speak  by  and  by.  Mark  at 
present  so  much  ;  what  the  essence  of  Scandinavian  and  in- 
deed of  all  paganism  is  :  a  recognition  of  the  forces  of  nature  as 
godlike,  stupendous,  personal  agencies, — as  gods  and  demons. 
Not  inconceivable  to  us.  It  is  the  infant  thought  of  man 
opening  itself,  with  awe  and  wonder,  on  this  ever-stupendous 
universe.  To  me  there  is  in  the  Norse  system  something  very 
genuine,  very  great  and  manlike.  A  broad  simplicity,  rus- 
ticity, so  very  different  from  the  light  gracefulness  of  the  old 
Greek  paganism,  distinguishes  this  Scandinavian  system.  It 
is  thought ;  the  genuine  thought  of  deep,  rude,  earnest  minds, 
fairly  open  to  the  things  about  them ;  a  face-to-faco  and 
heart-to-heart  inspection  of  the  things, — the  first  character- 
istic of  all  good  thought  in  all  times.  Not  graceful  lightness, 
half-sport,  as  in  the  Greek  paganism  ;  a  certain  homely  truth- 
fulness and  rustic  strength,  a  great  rude  sincerity,  discloses 
itself  here.  It  is  strange,  after  our  beautiful  Apollo  statues 
and  clear  smiling  mythuses,  to  come  down  upon  the  Norse 
gods  "  brewing  ale  "  to  hold  their  feast  with  Aegir,  the  Sea- 
Jotun  ;  sending  out  Thor  to  get  the  caldron  for  them  in  the 
Jotun  country  ;  Thor,  after  many  adventures,  clapping  the  pot 
on  his  head,  like  a  huge  hat,  and  walking  off  with  it, — quite 
lost  in  it,  the  ears  of  the  pot  reaching  down  to  his  heels.  A 
kind  of  vacant  hugeness,  large  awkward  giauthood,  character- 


TUB  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  23 

izes  that  Norse  system  ;  enormous  force,  as  yet  altogether  un- 
tutored, stalking  helpless  with  large  uncertain  strides.  Con- 
sider only  their  primary  mythus  of  the  creation.  The  gods, 
having  got  the  giant  Ymer  slain,  a  giant  made  by  "  warm 
wind,"  and  much  confused  work,  out  of  the  conflict  of  frost 
and  fire, — determined  on  constructing  a  world  with  him.  His 
blood  made  the  sea ;  his  flesh  was  the  land,  the  rocks  his 
bones  ;  of  his  eyebrows  they  formed  Asgard  their  gods'-dweh1- 
ing  ;  his  skull  was  the  great  blue  vault  of  immensity ;  and  the 
b rains  of  it  became  the  clouds.  What  a  Hyper-brobdignagian 
business  !  Untamed  thought,  great,  giantlike,  enormous  ; — 
to  be  tamed  in  duo  time  into  the  compact  greatness,  not  gi- 
antlikq^it  godlike  and  stronger  than  gianthood,  of  the  Shakes- 
peares,  the  Goethes ! — Spiritually  as  well  as  bodily  these  men 
are  our  progenitors. 

I  like,  too,  that  representation  they  have  of  the  tree  Igdra- 
sil. All  life  is  figured  by  them  as  a  tree.  Igdrasil,  the  ash- 
tree  of  existence,  has  its  roots  deep-down,  in  the  kingdoms  of 
Hela  or  death  ;  its  trunk  reaches  up  heaven-high,  spreads  its 
boughs  over  the  whole  universe  ;  it  is  the  tree  of  existence. 
At  the  foot  of  it,  in  the  death-kingdom,  sit  three  nornas,  fates — 
the  past,  present,  future  ;  watering  its  roots  from  the  sacred 
weU.  Its  "  boughs,"  with  "their  buddings  and  disleafings, — 
events,  things  suffered,  things  done,  catastrophes, — stretch 
through  all  lands  and  times.  Is  not  every  leaf  of  it  a  biogra- 
phy, every  fibre  there  an  act  or  word  ?  Its  boughs  are  his- 
tories of  nations.  The  rustle  of  it  is  the  noise  of  human  exist- 
ence, onwards  from  of  old.  It  grows  there,  the  breath  of 
human  passion  rustling  through  it : — or  stormtost,  the  storm- 
wind  howling  through  it  like  the  voice  of  ah1  the  gods.  It  is 
Igdrasil,  the  tree  of  existence.  It  is  the  past,  the  present,  and 
the  future  ;  what  was  done,  what  is  doing,  what  will  bo 
done  ;  "  the  infinite  conjugation  of  the  verb  to  do."  Consider- 
ing how  human  things  circulate,  each  inextricably  in  com- 
munion with  all, — how  the  word  I  speak  to  you  to-day  is  bor- 
rowed, not  from  Ulfila  the  Mcesogoth  only,  but  from  all  men 
since  the  first  man  began  to  speak, — I  find  no  similitude  so 
true  as  this  of  a  tree.  Beautiful ;  altogether  beautiful  and 


24  HEROES  AND  IIERO -WORSHIP. 

great.     The  "machine  of  tlic  universe," — alas,  do  but  think  of 
that  in  contrast ! 

Well,  it  is  strange  enough  this  old  Norse  view  of  Nature  ; 
different  enough  from  what  we  believe  of  nature.  Whence  it 
specially  came,  one  would  not  like  to  be  compelled  to  say  very 
minutely  !  One  thing  we  may  say  :  It  came  from  the  thoughts 
of  Norse  men  ; — from  the  thought,  above  all,  of  the  first  Norse 
man  who  had  an  original  power  of  thinking.  The  first  Norse 
"man  of  genius,"  as  we  should  call  him  !  Innumerable  men 
had  passed  by,  across  this  universe,  with  a  dumb  vague 
wonder,  such  as  the  very  animals  may  feel ;  or  with  a  pain- 
ful, fruitlessly  inquiring  wonder,  such  as  men  onlyApl ;  till 
the  great  thinker  came,  the  original  man,  the  seer ;  whoso 
shaped  spoken  thought  awakes  the  slumbering  capability  of 
all  into  thought.  It  is  ever  the  way  with  the  thinker  ;  the 
spiritual  hero.  What  he  says,  all  men  were  not  far  from  say- 
ing, were  longing  to  say.  The  thoughts  of  all  start  up,  as 
from  painful  enchanted  sleep,  round  his  thought ;  answering 
to  it,  yes,  even  so  !  Joyful  to  men  as  the  dawning  of  day 
from  night ; — is  it  not,  indeed,  the  awakening  for  them  from 
no-being  into  being,  from  death  into  life  ?  We  still  honor 
such  a  man  ;  call  him  poet,  genius^  and  so  forth  :  but  to  these 
wild  men  he  was  a  very  magician,  a  worker  of  miraculous  un- 
expected blessing  for  them  ;  a  prophet,  a  god ! — Thought 
once  awakened  does  not  again  slumber  ;  unfolds  itself  into  a 
system  of  thought ;  grows,  in  man  after  man,  generation  after 
generation, — till  its  full  stature  is  reached,  and  such  system 
of  thought  can  grow  no  farther,  but  must  give  place  to  an- 
other. 

For  the  Norse  people,  the  man  now  named  Odin,  and  chief 
Norse  god,  we  fancy,  was  such  a  man.  A  teacher,  and  cap- 
tain of  soul  and  of  body  ;  a  hero,  of  worth  immeasurable  ;  ad- 
miration for  whom,  transcending  the  known  bounds,  became 
adoration.  Has  he  not  the  power  of  articulate  thinking  ;  and 
many  other  powers,  as  yet  miraculous?  So,  with  boundless 
gratitude  would  the  rude  Norse  heart  feel.  Has  he  not  solved 
for  them  the  sphinx-enigma  of  this  universe  ;  given  assurance 


TUB  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  25 

to  them  of  their  own  destiny  there  ?  By  him  they  know  now 
what  they  have  to  do  here,  what  to  look  for  hereafter.  Ex- 
istence has  become  articulate,  melodious  by  him  ;  he  first  has 
made  life  alive  !  We  may  call  this  Odin,  the  origin  of  Norse 
mythology  :  Odin,  or  whatever  name  the  first  Norse  thinker 
bore  while  he  was  a  man  among  men.  His  view  of  the  uni- 
verse once  promulgated,  a  like  view  starts  into  being  in  all 
minds  ;  grows,  keeps  ever  growing,  while  it  continues  credible 
there.  In  all  minds  it  lay  written,  but  invisibly,  as  in  sympa- 
thetic ink  ;  at  his  word  it  starts  into  visibility  in  alL  Nay,  in 
every  epoch  of  the  world,  the  great  event,  parent  of  all  others, 
is  it  not  the  arrival  of  a  thinker  in  the  wrorld ! — 

One  other  thing  we  must  not  forget ;  it  will  explain,  a 
little,  the  confusion  of  these  Norse  eddas.  They  are  not  one 
coherent  system  of  thought ;  but  properly  the  summation  of 
several  successive  systems.  All  this  of  the  old  Norse  belief 
which  is  flung  out  for  us,  in  one  level  of  distance  in  the  edda, 
like  a  picture  painted  on  the  same  canvas,  does  not  at  all 
stand  so  in  the  reality.  It  stands  rather  at  all  manner  of  dis- 
tances and  depths,  of  successive  generations  since  the  belief 
first  began.  All  Scandinavian  thinkers,  since  the  first  of 
them,  contributed  to  that  Scandinavian  system  of  thought ; 
in  ever-new  elaboration  and  addition,  it  is  the  combined  work 
of  them  all.  "What  history  it  had,  how  it  changed  from  shape  to 
shape,  by  one  thinker's  contribution  after  another,  till  it  got 
to  the  full  final  shape  we  see  it  under  the  Edda,  no  man  will  now 
ever  know :  its  councils  of  Trebisond,  councils  of  Trent,  Ath- 
anasiuses,  Dantes,  Luthers,  are  sunk  without  echo  in  the  dark 
night !  Only  that  it  had  such  a  history  we  can  all  know. 
Wheresoever  a  thinker  appeared,  there  in  the  thing  he  thought 
of  was  a  contribution,  accession,  a  change  or  revolution  made. 
Alas,  the  grandest  "  revolution  "  of  all,  the  one  made  by  the 
man  Odin  himself,  is  not  this  too  sunk  for  us  like  the  rest ! 
Of  Odin  what  history?  Strange  rather  to  reflect  that  he  had 
a  history !  That  this  Odin,  in  his  wild  Norse  vesture,  with 
his  wild  beard  and  eyes,  his  rude  Norse  speech  and  ways,  was 
a  man  like  us  ;  with  our  sorrows,  joys,  with  our  limbs,  feat- 
ures ; — intrinsically  all  one  as  we :  and  did  such  a  work ! 


26  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

But  the  work,  much  of  it,  has  perished  ;  the  worker,  all  to 
the  name.  "  Wednesday,"  men  will  say  to-morrow  ;  Odin's 
day  !  Of  Odin  there  exists  no  history  ;  no  document  of  it ; 
no  guess  about  it  worth  repeating. 

Snorro  indeed,  in  the  quietest  manner,  almost  in  a  brief 
business  style,  writes  down,  in  his  Heimsktingla,  how  Odin 
was  a  heroic  prince,  in  the  Black-sea  region,  with  twelve 
peers,  and  a  great  people  straitened  for  room.  How  he  led 
these  Asen  (Asiatics)  of  his  out  of  Asia  ;  settled  them  in  the 
north  parts  of  Europe,  by  warlike  conquest ;  invented  letters, 
poetry  and  so  forth, — and  came  by  and  by  to  be  worshiped 
as  chief  god  by  these  Scandinavians,  his  twelve  peers  made 
into  twelve  sons  of  his  own,  gods  like  himself  :  Snorro  has  no 
doubt  of  this.  Saxo  Grammaticus,  a  very  curious  northman 
of  that  same  century,  is  still  more  unhesitating  ;  scruples  not 
to  find  out  a  historical  fact  in  every  individual  mythus,  and 
writes  it  down  as  a  terrestrial  event  in  Denmark  or  elsewhere. 
Terfoms,  learned  and  cautious,  some  centuries  later,  assigns 
by  calculation  a  date  for  it :  Odin,  he  says,  came  into  Europe 
about  the  year  70  before  Christ.  Of  all  which,  as  grounded 
on  mere  uncertainties,  found  to  be  untenable  now,  I  need  say 
nothing.  Far,  very  far  beyond  the  year  70  !  Odin's  date, 
adventures,  whole  terrestrial  history,  figure  and  environment 
are  sunk  from  us  forever  into  unknown  thousands  of  years. 

Nay  Grimm,  the  German  antiquary,  goes  so  far  as  to  deny 
that  any  man  Odin  ever  existed.  He  proves  it  by  etymology. 
The  word  Wuotan,  which  is  the  original  form  of  Odin,  a  word 
spread,  as  name  of  their  chief  divinity,  over  all  the  Teutonic 
nations  everywhere  ;  this  word,  which  connects  itself,  ac- 
cording to  Grimm,  with  the  Latin  vadere,  with  the  English 
wade  and  suchlike,  —means  primarily  movement,  source  of 
movement,  power ;  and  is  the  fit  name  of  the  highest  god, 
not  of  any  man.  The  word  signifies  divinity,  he  says,  among 
the  old  Saxon,  German  and  aD  Teutonic  nations  ;  the  adjec- 
tives formed  from  it  at  all  signify  divine,  supreme,  or  some- 
thing pertaining  to  the  chief  god.  Like  enough  !  We  must 
bow  to  Grimm  in  matters  etymological.  Let  us  consider  it 
fixed  that  Wuolan  means  wading,  force  of  movement.  And 


'THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  27 

now  still,  what  hinders  it  from  being  the  name  of  a  heroic 
man  and  mover,  as  well  as  of  a  god  ?  As  for  the  adjectives, 
and  words  formed  from  it, — did  not  the  Spaniards  in  their 
universal  admiration  for  Lope,  get  into  the  habit  of*  saying 
"a  Lope  flower,"  "  a  Lope  dama,"  if  the  flower  or  woman 
were  of  surpassing  beauty?  Had  this  lasted,  Lope  would 
have  grown  in  Spain,  to  be  an  adjective  signifying  godlike 
also.  Indeed,  Adam  Smith,  in  his  "Essay  on  Language," 
surmises  that  all  adjectives  whatsoever  were  formed  precisely 
in  that  way :  some  very  green  thing,  chiefly  notable  for  its 
greenness,  got  the  appellative  name  green,  and  then  the  next 
thing  remarkable  for  that  quality,  a  tree  for  instance,  was 
named  the  green  tree, — as  we  still  say  "the  steam  coach," 
"  four-horse  coach,"  or  the  like.  All  primary  adjectives,  ac- 
cording to  Smith,  were  formed  in  this  way  ;  were  at  first 
substantives  and  things.  We  cannot  annihilate  a  man  for 
etymologies  like  that !  Surely  here  was  a  first  teacher  and 
captain  ;  surely  there  must  have  been  an  Odin,  palpable  to 
the  sense  at  one  time  ;  no  adjective,  but  a  real  hero  of  flesh 
and  blood  !  The  voice  of  all  tradition,  history  or  echo  of 
history,  agrees  with  all  that  thought  will  teach  one  about  it, 
to  assure  us  of  this. 

How  the  man  Odin  came  to  be  considered  a  god,  the  chief 
god  ? — that  surely  is  a  question  which  nobody  would  wish  to 
dogmatise  upon.  I  have  said,  his  people  knew  no  limits  to 
their  admiration  of  him  ;  they  had  as  yet  no  scale  to  measure 
admiration  by.  Fancy  your  own  generous  heart's-love  of  some 
greatest  man  expanding  till  it  transcended  all  bounds,  till  it  filled 
and  overflowed  the  whole  field  of  your  thought !  Or  what  if 
this  man  Odin, — since  a  groat  deep  soul,  with  the  afflatus  and 
mysterious  tide  of  vision  and  impulse  rushing  on  him  he  knows 
not  whence,  is  ever  an  enigma,  a  kind  of  terror  and  wonder 
to  himself, — should  have  felt  that  perhaps,  he  was  divine  ;  that 
he  was  some  effluence  of  the  "  "Wuotan,"  "  movement,"  supreme 
power  and  divinity,  of  whom  to  his  rapt  vision  all  nature  was 
the  awful  flame-image;  that  some  effluence  of  Wuotan  dwelt  hero 
in  him  !  He  was  not  necessarily  false  ;  he  was  but  mistaken, 
speaking  the  truest  he  knew.  A  great  soul,  any  sincere  soul, 


HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

knows  not  what  he  is, — alternates  between  the  highest  height 
and  the  lowest  depth ;  can,  of  all  things,  the  least  measure — 
himself!  What  others  take  him  for,  and  what  he  guesses 
that  he  may  be  ;  these  two  items  strangely  act  on  one  another, 
help  to  determine  one  another.  With  all  men  reverently  ad- 
miring him  ;  with  his  own  wild  soul  full  of  noble  ardors  and 
affections,  of  whirlwind  chaotic  darkness  and  glorious  new 
light ;  a  divine  universe  bursting  all  into  godlike  beauty 
round  him,  and  no  man  to  whom  the  like  ever  had  befallen, 
what  could  he  think  himself  to  be  ?  "  Woutan  ?  "  All  men 
answered,  "  Wbutan ! " — 

And  then  consider  what  mere  time  will  do  in  such  cases  ; 
how  if  a  man  was  great  while  living,  he  becomes  tenfold 
greater  when  dead.  What  an  enormous  camcra-obscura  mag- 
nifier is  tradition  !  How  a  thing  grows  in  the  human  memory, 
in  the  human  imagination,  when  love,  worship  and  all  that  lies 
in  the  human  heart,  is  there  to  encourage  it.  And  in  the  dark- 
ness, in  the  entire  ignorance ;  without  date  or  document,  no 
book,  no  Arundel-marble  ;  only  here  and  there  some  dumb 
monumental  cairn.  Why,  in  thirty  or  forty  years,  were  there 
no  books,  any  great  man  would  grow  mythic,  the  contempora- 
ries who  had  seen  him,  being  once  all  dead.  And  in  three  hun- 
dred years,  and  in  three  thousand  years — ! — To  attempt  theo- 
rizing on  such  matters  would  profit  little  :  they  are  matters 
which  refuse  to  be  theoremed  and  diagramed ;  which  logic 
ought  to  know  that  she  cannot  speak  of.  Enough  for  us  to 
discern,  far  in  the  uttermost  distance,  some  gleam,  as  of  a 
small  real  light  shining  in  the  centre  of  that  enormous  camera- 
obscura  image  ;  to  discern  that  the  centre  of  it  all  was  not  a 
madness  and  nothing,  but  a  sanity  and  something. 

This  light,  kindled  in  the  great  dark  vortex  of  the  Norse 
mind,  dark  but  living,  waiting  only  for  light ;  this  is  to  me 
the  centre  of  the  whole.  How  such  light  will  then  shine  out, 
and  with  wondrous  thousandfold  expansion  spread  itself,  in 
forms  and  colors,  depends  not  on  it,  so  much  as  on  the 
national  mind  recipient  of  it.  The  colors  and  forms  of  your 
light  will  be  those  of  the  cut-glass  it  has  to  shine  through. — 
Curious  to  think  how,  for  every  man,  any  the  truest  fact  is 


THE  I1ERO  AS  DIVINITY,  29 

modeled  by  the  nature  of  the  man  !  I  said,  the  earnest  man, 
speafcing  to  his  brother  men,  must  always  have  stated  what 
seemed  to  him  a  fact,  a  real  appearance  of  nature.  But  the 
way  in  which  such  appearance  or  fact  shaped  itself, — what 
sort  of  fact  it  became  for  him, — was  and  is  modified  by  his 
own  laws  of  thinking ;  deep,  subtle,  but  universal,  ever-oper- 
ating laws.  The  world  of  nature,  for  every  man,  is  the  phan- 
tasy of  himself ;  this  world  is  the  multiplex  "  image  of  his 
own  dream."  Who  knows  to  what  unnamable  subtleties  of 
spiritual  law  all  these  pagan  fables  owe  their  shape  !  The 
number  twelve,  divisiblest  of  all,  which  could  be  halved, 
quartered,  parted  into  three,  into  six,  the  most  remarkable 
number, — this  was  enough  to  determine  the  signs  of  the 
Zodiac,  the  number  of  Odin's  sons  and  innumerable  other 
twelves.  Any  vague  rumor  of  number  had  a  tendency  to 
settle  itself  into  twelve.  So  with  regard  to  every  other 
matter.  And  quite  unconsciously  too, — with  no  notion  of 
building-up  "  Allegories ! "  But  the  fresh  clear  glance  of 
those  first  ages  would  be  prompt  in  discerning  the  secret  re- 
lations of  things,  and  wholly  open  to  obey  these.  Schiller 
finds  in  the  cestus  of  Venus  an  everlasting  resthetic  truth  as 
the  nature  of  all  beauty  ;  curious  : — but  he  is  careful  not  to 
insinuate  that  the  old  Greek  my  thists  had  any  notion  of  lectur- 
ing about  the  "  Philosophy  of  Criticism !  " On  the  whole, 

we  must  leave  those  boundless  regions.  Cannot  we  conceive 
that  Odin  was  a  reality  ?  Error  indeed,  error  enough,  but 
sheer  falsehood,  idle  fables,  allegory  aforethought, — we  will 
not  believe  that  our  fathers  believed  in  these. 

Odin's  Runes  are  a  significant  feature  of  him.  Runes,  and 
the  miracles  of  "  magic  "  he  worked  by  them,  make  a  great 
feature  in  tradition.  Runes  are  the  Scandinavian  alphabet ; 
suppose  Odin  to  have  been  the  inventor  of  letters,  as  weh1  as 
"  magic,"  among  that  people !  It  is  the  greatest  invention 
man  has  ever  made,  this  of  marking-down  the  unseen  thought 
that  is  in  him  by  written  characters.  It  is  a  kind  of  second 
speech,  almost  as  miraculous  as  the  first.  You  remember  the 
astonishment  and  incredulity  of  Atahualpa  the  Peruvian  king  ; 
how  lie  made  the  Spanish  soldier  who  was  guarding  him 


30  HEROES  AND  UERO- WORSHIP. 

scratch  Dios  on  his  thumb-nail,  that  he  might  try  the  next 
soldier  with  it,  to  ascertain  whether  such  a  miracle  was*pos- 
sible.  If  Odin  brought  letters  among  his  people,  he  might 
work  magic  enough. 

Writing  by  runes  has  some  air  of  being  original  among  the 
Norsemen  :  not  a  Phoenician  alphabet,  but  a  native  Scandi- 
navian one.  Snorro  tells  us  farther  that  Odin  invented  poe- 
try ;  the  music  of  human  speech,  as  well  as  that  miraculous 
runic  marking  of  it  Transport  yourselves  into  the  early 
childhood  of  nations  ;  the  first  beautiful  morning-light  of  our 
Europe,  when  all  yet  lay  in  fresh  young  radiance,  as  of  a  great 
sunrise,  and  our  Europe  was  first  beginning  to  think,  to  be  ! 
Wonder,  hope  ;  infinite  radiance  of  hope  and  wonder,  as  of  a 
young  child's  thoughts,  in  the  hearts  of  these  strong  men ! 
Strong  sous  of  nature  ;  and  here  was  not  only  a  wild  captain 
and  fighter  ;  discerning  with  his  wild  flashing  eyes  what  to 
do,  with  his  wild  lion-heart  daring  and  doing  it ;  but  a  poet 
too,  all  that  we  mean  by  a  poet,  prophet,  great-devout  thinker 
and  inventor, — as  the  truly  great  man  ever  is.  A  hero  is  a 
hero  at  all  points  ;  in  the  soul  and  thought  of  him  first  of  alL 
This  Odin,  in  his  rude  semi-articulate  way,  had  a  word  to 
speak.  A  great  heart  laid  open  to  take  in  this  great  universe, 
and  man's  life  here,  and  utter  a  great  word  about  it.  A  hero, 
as  I  say,  in  his  own  rude  manner  ;  a  wise,  gifted,  noble-hearted 
man.  And  now,  if  we  still  admire  such  a  man  beyond  all 
others,  what  must  these  wild  Norse  souls,  first  awakened  into 
thinking  have  made  of  him  !  To  them,  as  yet  without  names 
for  it,  he  was  noble  and  noblest ;  hero,  prophet,  god  ;  Wuotan, 
the  greatest  of  all.  Thought  is  thought,  however  it  speak  or 
spell  itself.  Intrinsically,  I  conjecture,  this  Odin  must  have 
been  of  the  same  sort  of  stuff  as  the  greatest  kind  of  men.  A 
great  thought  in  the  wild  deep  heart  of  him  !  The  rough 
words  he  articulated,  are  they  not  the  rudimental  roots  of  those 
English  words  we  still  use  ?  He  worked  so,  in  that  obscure 
element.  But  he  was  as  a  light  kindled  in  it ;  a  light  of  intel- 
lect, rude  nobleness  of  heart,  the  only  kind  of  lights  we  have 
yet ;  a  hero,  as  I  say  :  and  he  had  to  shine  there,  and  make  his 
obscure  clement  a  little  lighter, — as  is  still  the  task  of  us  all. 


TIIE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  31 

We  will  fancy  him  to  be  the  type  Norseman ;  the  finest 
Teuton  whom  that  race  had  yet  produced.  The  rude  Norse 
heart  burst-up  into  boundless  admiration  round  him  ;  into 
adoration.  He  is  as  a  root  of  so  many  great  things  ;  the  fruit 
of  him  is  found  growing,  from  deep  thousands  of  years,  over 
the  whole  field  of  Teutonic  life.  Our  own  Wednesday,  as  I 
said,  is  it  not  still  Odin's  day  ?  Wednesbury,  Wansborough, 
Wanstead,  Wandsworth ;  Odin  grew  into  England  too,  these 
are  still  leaves  from  that  root !  He  was  the  chief  god  to  all 
the  Teutonic  peoples  ;  their  pattern  Norseman  ; — in  such  way 
did  they  admire  their  pattern  Norseman  ;  that  was  the  fortune 
he  had  in  the  world. 

Thus  if  the  man  Odin  himself  have  vanished  utterly,  there 
is  this  huge  shadow  of  him  which  still  projects  itself  over  the 
whole  history  of  his  people.  For  this  Odin  once  admitted  to 
be  God,  we  can  understand  well  that  the  whole  Scandinavian 
scheme  of  nature,  or  dim  no-scheme,  whatever  it  might  before 
have  been,  would  now  begin  to  develop  itself  altogether  dif- 
ferently, and  grow  henceforth  in  a  new  manner.  What  this 
Odin  saw  into,  and  taught  with  his  runes  and  his  rhymes,  the 
whole  Teutonic  people  laid  to  heart  and  carried  forward.  His 
way  of  thought  became  their  way  of  thought : — such,  under 
new  conditions,  is  the  history  of  every  great  thinker  still.  In 
gigantic  confused  lineaments,  like  some  enormous  camera-ob- 
scura  shadow  thrown  upwards  from  the  dead  deeps  of  the 
past,  and  covering  the  whole  northern  Heaven,  is  not  that 
Scandinavian  mythology  in  some  sort  the  portraiture  of  this 
man  Odin  ?  The  gigantic  image  of  his  natural  face,  legible  or 
not  legible  there,  expanded  and  confused  in  that  manner  ! 
Ah,  thought,  I  say,  is  'always  thought.  No  great  man  lives 
in  vain.  The  history  of  the  world  is  but  the  biography  of 
great  men. 

To  me  there  is  something  very  touching  in  this  primeval 
figure  of  heroism  ;  in  such  artless,  helpless,  but  hearty  entire 
reception  of  a  hero  by  his  fellow-men.  Never  so  helpless  in 
shape,  it  is  the  noblest  of  feelings,  and  a  feeling  in  some  shape 
or  other  perennial  as  a  man  himself.  If  I  could  show  in  any 
measure,  what  I  feel  deeply  for  a  long  time  now,  that  it  is  the 


32  HEROES  AND  I1ERO- WORSHIP. 

vital  element  of  manhood,  the  soul  of  man's  history  here  in 
our  world, — it  would  be  the  chief  use  of  this  discoursing  at 
present.  We  do  not  now  call  our  great  men  gods,  nor  admire 
ivithout  limit ;  ah  no,  with  limit  enough  !  But  if  we  have  no 
great  men,  or  do  not  admire  at  all, — that  were  a  still  worse 
case. 

This  poor  Scandinavian  hero-worship,  that  whole  Norse  way 
of  looking  at  the  universe,  and  adjusting  oneself  there,  has  an 
indestructible  merit  for  us.  A  rude  childlike  way  of  recog- 
nizing the  divineness  of  nature,  the  divineness  of  man,  most 
rude,  yet  heartfelt,  robust,  giantlike  ;  betokening  what  a  giant 
of  a  man  this  child  would  yet  grow  to  ! — It  was  a  truth,  and 
is  none.  Is  it  not  as  the  half-dumb  stifled  voice  of  the  long 
buried  generations  of  our  own  fathers  calling  out  of  the  depths 
of  ages  to  us,  in  whose  veins  their  blood  still  runs  :  "  This 
then,  this  is  what  we  made  of  the  world  ;  this  is  all  the  image 
and  notion  we  could  form  to  ourselves  of  this  great  mystery 
of  a  life  and  universe.  Despise  it  not.  You  are  raised  high 
above  it,  to  large  free  scope  of  vision  ;  but  you  too  are  not  yet 
at  the  top.  No,  your  notion  too,  so  much  enlarged,  is  but  a 
partial,  imperfect  one  ;  that  matter  is  a  thing  no  man  will 
ever,  in  time  or  out  of  time,  comprehend  ;  after  thousands  of 
years  of  ever-new  expansion,  man  will  find  himself  but  strug- 
gling to  comprehend  again  a  part  of  it :  the  thing  is  larger 
than  man,  not  to  be  comprehend  by  him  ;  an  infinite  thing !  " 

The  essence  of  the  Scandinavian,  as  indeed  of  all  pagan 
mythologies,  we  found  to  be  recognition  of  the  divineness  of 
nature  ;  sincere  communion  of  man  with  the  mysterious  in- 
visible powers  visibly  seen  at  work  in  the  world  round  him. 
This,  I  should  say,  is  more  sincerely  done  in  the  Scandinavian 
than  in  any  mythology  I  know.  Sincerity  is  the  great  charac- 
ter of  it.  Superior  sincerity  (far  superior)  consoles  us  for  the 
total  want  of  old  Grecian  grace.  Sincerity,  I  think,  is  better 
than  grace.  I  feel  that  these  old  northmeu  were  looking  into 
nature  with  open  eye  and  soul  most  earnest,  honest ;  childlike, 
and  yet  manlike  ;  with  a  great-hearted  simplicity  and  depth 
and  freshness,  in  a  true,  loving,  admiring,  unfearing  way.  A 


THE  IIERO  AS  DIVINITY.  33 

right  valiant,  true  old  race  of  men.  Such  recognition  of  na- 
ture one  finds  to  be  the  chief  element  of  paganism  ;  recogni- 
tion of  man,  and  his  moral  duty,  though  this  too  is  not  want- 
ing, comes  to  be  the  chief  element  only  in  purer  forms  of 
religion.  Here,  indeed,  is  a  great  distinction  and  epoch  in 
human  beliefs  ;  a  great  landmark  in  the  religious  develop- 
ment of  mankind.  Man  first  puts  himself  in  relation  with  na- 
ture and  her  powers,  wonders  and  worships  over  those ;  not 
till  a  later  epoch  does  he  discern  that  ah1  power  is  moral,  that 
the  grand  point  is  the  distinction  for  him  of  good  and  evil,  of 
thou  shall  and  thou  shall  not. 

With  regard  to  these  fabulous  delineations  in  the  Edda,  I 
will  remark,  moreover,  as  indeed  was  already  hinted,  that  most 
probably  they  must  have  been  of  much  newer  date  :  most 
probably,  even  from  the  first,  were  comparatively  idle  for  the 
old  Norsemen,  and  as  it  were  a  kind  of  poetic  sport.  Allegory 
and  poetic  delineation,  as  I  said  above,  cannot  be  religious 
faith  ;  the  faith  itself  must  first  be  there,  then  allegory  enough 
wih1  gather  round  it,  as  the  fit  body  round  its  soul.  The  Norse 
faith,  I  can  well  suppose,  like  other  faiths,  was  most  active 
while  it  lay  mainly  in  the  silent  state,  and  had  not  yet  much 
to  say  about  itself,  still  less  to  sing. 

Among  those  shadowy  Edda  matters,  amid  all  that  fantastic 
congeries  of  assertions,  and  traditions,  in  their  musical  my- 
thologies, the  main  practical  belief  a  man  could  have  was  prob- 
ably not  much  more  than  this  ;  of  the  Valkyrs  and  the  Hall  of 
Odin ;  of  an  inflexible  Destiny  ;  and  that  the  one  thing  need- 
ful for  a  man  was  to  be  brave.  The  Valkyrs  are  choosers  of 
the  slain  :  a  destiny  inexorable,  which  it  is  useless  trying  to 
bend  or  soften,  has  appointed  who  is  to  be  slain  :  this  was  a 
fundamental  point  for  the  Norse  believer  ;  as  indeed  it  is  for 
all  earnest  men  everywhere,  for  a  Mohammed,  a  Luther,  a 
Napoleon  too.  It  lies  at  the  basis  this  for  every  such  man  ;  it 
is  the  woof  out  of  which  his  whole  system  of  thought  is  woven. 
The  Valkyrs ;  and  then  that  these  choosers  lead  the  brave  to 
a  heavenly  Hall  of  Odin;  only  the  base  and  slavish  being 
thrust  elsewhither,  into  the  realms  of  Hela  the  death  goddess. 
I  take  this  to  have  been  the  soul  of  the  whole  Norse  belief. 


34  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

They  understood  in  their  heart  that  it  was  indispensable  to  be 
brave  ;  that  Odin  would  have  no  favor  for  them,  but  despise 
and  thrust  them  out,  if  they  were  not  brave.  Consider  too 
whether  there  is  not  something  in  this !  It  is  an  everlasting 
duty,  valid  in  our  day  as  in  that ;  the  duty  of  being  brave. 
Valor  is  still  value.  The  first  duty  for  a  man  is  still  that  of 
subduing  fear.  We  must  get  rid  of  fear  ;  we  cannot  act  at 
all  till  then.  A  man's  acts  are  slavish,  not  true  but  specious  ; 
his  very  thoughts  are  false,  he  thinks  too  as  a  slave  and  coward, 
till  he  have  got  fear  under  his  feet.  Odin's  creed,  if  we  disen- 
tangle the  real  kernel  of  it,  is  true  to  this  hour.  A  man  shall 
and  must  be  valiant ;  he  must  march  forward,  and  quit  him- 
self like  a  man, — trusting  imperturbably  in  the  appointment 
and  choice  of  the  upper  powers  ;  and,  on  the  whole,  not  fear 
at  all.  Now  and  always  the  completeness  of  his  victory  over 
fear  will  determine  how  much  of  a  man  he  is. 

It  is  doubtless  very  savage  that  kind  of  valor  of  the  old 
Northmen.  Snorro  tells  us  they  thought  it  a  shame  and 
misery  not  to  die  in  battle ;  and  if  natural  death  seemed  to 
be  coming  on,  they  would  cut  wounds  in  their  flesh,  that 
Odin  might  receive  them  as  warriors  slain.  Old  kings,  about 
to  die,  had  their  body  laid  into  a  ship  ;  the  ship  sent  forth, 
with  sails  set  and  slow  fire  burning  it ;  that,  once  out  at  sea, 
it  might  blaze  up  in  flame,  and  in  such  manner  bury  worthily 
the  old  hero,  at  once  in  the  sky  and  in  the  ocean !  "Wild 
bloody  valor ;  yet  valor  of  its  kind ;  better,  I  say,  than  none. 
In  the  old  sea-kings  too,  what  an  indomitable  rugged  energy  ! 
Silent,  with  closed  lips,  as  I  fancy  them,  unconscious  that  they 
were  specially  brave  ;  defying  the  wild  ocean  with  its  mon- 
sters, and  all  men  and  things  ; — progenitors  of  our  own  Blakes 
and  Nelsons !  No  Homer  sang  these  Norse  sea-kings ;  but 
Agamemnon's  was  a  small  audacity,  and  of  small  fruit  in  the 
world,  to  some  of  them  ; — to  Hrolf's  of  Normandy,  for  in- 
stance !  Hrolf,  or  Rollo,  Duke  of  Normandy,  the  wild  sea- 
king,  has  a  share  in  governing  England  at  this  hour. 

Nor  was  it  altogether  nothing,  even  that  wild  sea-roving 
and  battling,  through  so  many  generations.  It  needed  to  be 
ascertained  which  was  the  strongest  kind  of  men  ;  who  were 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  35 

to  be  rulers  over  whom.  Among  the  Northland  sovereigns, 
too,  I  find  some  who  got  the  title  icood-cutter ;  forest-felling 
kings.  Much  lies  in  that.  I  suppose  at  bottom  many  of 
them  were  forest-fellers  as  well  as  fighters,  though  the  Skalds 
talk  mainly  of  the  latter, — misleading  certain  critics  not  a 
little  ;  for  no  nation  of  men  could  ever  live  by  fighting  alone  ; 
there  could  not  produce  enough  come  out  of  that !  I  suppose 
the  right  good  fighter  was  oftenest  also  the  right  good  forest- 
feller, — the  right  good  improver,  discerner,  doer  and  worker 
in  every  kind  ;  for  true  valor,  different  enough  from  ferocity, 
is  the  basis  of  all.  A  more  legitimate  kind  of  valor  that ; 
showing  itself  against  the  untamed  forests  and  dark  brute 
powers  of  nature,  to  conquer  nature  for  us.  In  the  same  di- 
rection have  not  we  their  descendants  since  carried  it  far  ? 
May  such  valor  last  forever  with  us ! 

That  the  man  Odin,  speaking  with  a  hero's  voice  and  heart, 
as  with  an  impressiveness  out  of  heaven,  told  his  people  the 
infinite  importance  of  valor,  how  man  thereby  became  a  god  ; 
and  that  his  people,  feeling  a  response  to  it  in  their  own 
hearts,  believed  this  message  of  his,  and  thought  it  a  message 
out  of  heaven,  and  him  a  divinity  for  telling  it  them  :  this 
seems  to  me  the  primary  seed  grain  of  the  Norse  religion, 
from  which  all  manner  of  mythologies,  symbolic  practices, 
speculations,  allegories,  songs  and  sagas  would  naturally  grow. 
Grow, — how  strangely!  I  called  it  a  small  light  shining  and 
shaping  in  the  huge  vortex  of  Norse  darkness.  Yet  the  dark- 
ness itself  was  alive ;  consider  that.  It  was  the  eager,  inarti- 
culate uninstructed  mind  of  the  whole  Norse  people,  longing 
only  to  become  articulate,  to  go  on  articulating  ever  farther  ! 
The  living  doctrine  grows,  grows  ;— like  a  banyan-tree  ;  the 
first  seed  is  the  essential  thing  :  any  branch  strikes  itself 
down  into  the  earth,  becomes  a  new  root ;  and  so,  in  endless 
complexity,  we  have  a  whole  wood,  a  whole  jungle,  one  seed 
the  parent  of  it  all.  Was  not  the  whole  Norse  religion,  ac- 
cordingly, in  some  sense,  what  we  called  "  the  enormous 
shadow  of  this  man's  likeness  ?  "  Critics  trace  some  affinity 
in  some  Norse  mythuses,  of  the  creation  and  such  like,  with 
those  of  the  Hindoos.  The  cow  Atlumbla,  "licking  the  rime 


3G  HEROES  AND  UERO -WORSHIP. 

from  the  rocks,"  has  a  kind  of  Hindoo  look.  A  Hindoo  cow 
transported  into  frosty  countries.  Probably  enough  ;  indeed 
we  may  say  undoubtedly,  these  things  will  have  a  kindred 
with  the  remotest  lands,  with  the  earliest  times.  Thought 
does  not  die,  but  only  is  changed.  The  first  man  that  began 
to  think  in  this  planet  of  ours,  he  was  the  beginner  of  all. 
And  then  the  second  man,  and  the  third  man  ; — nay,  every 
true  thinker  to  this  hour  is  a  kind  of  Odin,  teaches  men  kin 
way  of  thought,  spreads  a  shadow  of  his  own  likeness  over 
sections  of  the  history  of  the  world. 

Of  the  distinctive  poetic  character  or  merit  of  this  Norse 
mythology  I  have  not  room  to  speak,  nor  does  it  concern  us 
much.  Some  wild  prophecies  we  have,  as  the  Voluspa  in  the 
Elder  Edda  ;  of  a  rapt,  earnest,  sibylline  sort.  But  they  were 
comparatively  an  idle  adjunct  of  the  matter,  men  who  as  it 
were  but  toyed  with  the  matter,  these  later  Skalds  ;  and  it  is 
their  songs  chiefly  that  survive.  In  later  centuries,  I  suppose, 
they  would  go  on  singing,  poetically  symbolizing,  as  our 
modern  painters  paint,  when  it  was  no  longer  from  the  inner- 
most heart,  or  not  from  the  heart  at  all.  This  is  everywhere 
to  be  weh1  kept  in  mind. 

Gray's  fragments  of  Norse  lore,  at  any  rate,  will  give  one 
no  notion  of  it ; — any  more  than  Pope  will  of  Homer.  It  is 
no  square-built,  gloomy  palace  of  black  ashlar  marble, 
shrouded  in  awe  and  horror,  as  Gray  gives  it  us :  no  ;  rough 
as  the  Norse  rocks,  as  the  Iceland  deserts,  it  is  ;  with  a  hearti- 
ness, homeliness,  even  a  tint  of  good  humor  and  robust  mirth 
in  the  middle  of  these  fearful  things.  The  strong  old  Norse 
heart  did  not  go  upon  theatrical  sublimities  ;  they  had  not 
time  to  tremble.  I  like  much  their  robust  simplicity  ;  their 
veracity,  directness  of  conception.  Thor  "  draws  down  his 
brows  "  in  a  veritable  Norse  rage  ;  "  grasps  his  hammer  till  the 
knuckles  grow  white."  Beautiful  traits  of  pity  too,  an  honest 
pity.  Balder  "the  white  god"  dies:  the  beautiful,  benig- 
nant ;  he  is  the  sun-god.  They  try  all  nature  for  a  remedy  ; 
but  he  is  dead.  Frigga,  his  mother,  sends  Hermoder  to  seek 
or  see  him  ;  nine  days  and  nine  nights  he  rides  through 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  37 

gloomy  deep  valleys,  a  labyrinth  of  gloom  ;  arrives  at  the 
bridge  with  its  gold  roof  :  the  keeper  says,  "  Yes,  Balder  did 
pass  here  ;  but  the  kingdom  of  the  dead  is  down  yonder,  far 
towards  the  north."  Hemioder  rides  on  ;  leaps  Hell-gate, 
Hela's  gate ;  does  see  Balder,  and  speak  with  him :  Balder 
cannot  be  delivered.  Inexorable  !  Hela  will  not,  for  Odin  or 
any  god,  give  him  up.  The  beautiful  and  gentle  has  to  remain 
there.  His  wife  had  volunteered  to  go  with  him,  to  die  with 
him.  They  shall  forever  remain  there.  He  sends  his  ring 
to  Odin  ;  Nanna  his  wife  sends  her  thimble  to  Frigga,  as  a  re- 
membrance— Ah  me  ! — 

For  indeed  valor  is  the  fountain  of  pity  too  ; — of  truth,  and 
all  that  is  great  and  good  in  man.  The  robust  homely  vigor 
of  the  Norse  heart  attaches  one  much,  in  these  delineations. 
Is  it  not  a  trait  of  right  honest  strength,  says  Uhland,  who 
has  written  a  fine  essay  on  Thor,  that  the  old  Norse  heart 
finds  its  friend  in  the  thunder-god?  That  it  is  not  fright- 
ened away  by  his  thunder  ;  but  finds  that  summer-heat,  the 
beautiful  noble  summer,  must  and  will  have  thunder  withal ! 
The  Norse  heart  loves  this  Thor  and  his  hammer-bolt ;  sports 
with  him.  Thor  is  summer-heat ;  the  god  of  peaceable  in- 
dustry as  well  as  thunder.  He  is  the  peasant's  friend  ;  his 
true  henchman  and  attendant  is  Thialfi,  manual  labor.  Thor 
himself  engages  in  all  manner  of  rough  manual  work,  scorns 
no  business  for  its  plebeianism  ;  is  ever  and  anon  travelling  to 
the  country  of  the  Jutuns,  harrying  those  chaotic  frost-mon- 
sters, subduing  them,  at  least  straitening  and  damaging 
them.  There  is  a  great  broad  humor  in  some  of  these 
things. 

Thor,  as  we  saw  above,  goes  to  Jotun-land,  to  seek  Hymir's 
caldron,  that  the  gods  may  brew  beer.  Hymir  the  huge  giant 
enters,  his  gray  beard  all  full  of  hoar-frost  ;  splits  pillars  with 
the  very  glance  of  his  eye  ;  Thor,  after  much  rough  tumult, 
snatches  the  pot,  claps  it  on  his  head  ;  the  "  handles  of  it 
reach  down  to  his  heels."  The  Norse  Skald  has  a  kind  of  lov- 
ing sport  with  Thor.  This  is  the  Hymir  whose  cattle,  the 
critics  have  discovered,  are  icebergs.  Huge  untutored  Brob- 
diguag  genius, — needing  only  to  be  tamed-down  ;  into  Shake- 


33  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

speares,  Dantes,  Goethes  !  It  is  all  gone  now,  that  old  Norse 
work, — Thor  the  thunder-god  changed  into  Jack  the  giant- 
killer  :  but  the  mind  that  made  it  is  here  yet.  How  strangely 
things  grow,  and  die,  and  do  not  die  !  There  are  twigs  of 
*  that  great  world-tree  of  Norse  belief  still  curiously  traceable. 
This  poor  Jack  of  the  nursery,  with  his  miraculous  shoes  of 
swiftness,  coat  of  darkness,  sword  of  sharpness,  he  is  one. 
Hynde  Etin,  and  still  more  decisively  Red  Etin  of  Ireland,  in 
the  Scottish  ballads,  these  are  both  derived  from  Norseland  ; 
Etin  is  evidently  a  Jotun.  Nay,  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  is  a 
twig  too  of  this  same  world-tree  ;  there  seems  no  doubt  of 
that  Hamlet,  Amleth,  I  find  is  really  a  mythic  personage  ; 
and  his  tragedy,  of  the  poisoned  father,  poisoned  asleep  by 
drops  in  his  ear,  and  the  rest,  is  a  Norse  mythus  !  Old  Saxo, 
as  his  wont  was,  made  it  a  Danish  history  ;  Shakespeare,  out 
of  Saxo,  made  it  what  we  see.  That  is  a  twig  of  the  world- 
tree  that  has  grown,  I  think  ; — by  nature  or  accident  that  one 
has  grown ! 

In  fact,  these  old  Norse  songs  have  a  truth  in  them,  an  in- 
ward perennial  truth  and  greatness — as,  indeed,  all  must  have 
that  can  very  long  preserve  itself  by  tradition  alone.  It  is  a 
greatness  not  of  mere  body  and  gigantic  bulk,  but  a  rude 
greatness  of  soul.  There  is  a  sublime  uncomplaining  melan- 
choly traceable  in  these  old  hearts.  A  great  free  glance  into 
the  very  deeps  of  thought.  They  seem  to  have  seen,  these 
brave  old  Northmen,  what  meditation  has  taught  all  men  in 
all  ages,  that  this  world  is  after  all  but  a  show, — a  phenome- 
non or  appearance,  no  real  thing.  All  deep  souls  see  into 
that — the  Hindoo  mythologist,  the  German  philosopher, — the 
Shakespeare,  the  earnest  thinker,  wherever  he  may  be  : 

We  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of  1 

One  of  Thor's  expeditions,  to  Utgard  (the  Outer  garden, 
central  seat  of  Jotuu-land),  is  remarkable  in  this  respect 
Thialfi  was  with  him,  and  Loke.  After  various  adventures, 
they  entered  upon  Giant-land  ;  wandered  over  plains,  wild 
uncultivated  places,  among  stones  and  trees.  At  nightfall 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  39 

they  noticed  a  bouse  ;  and  aa  the  door,  which  indeed  formed 
one  whole  side  of  the  house,  was  open,  they  entered.  It  was 
a  simple  habitation  ;  one  large  hall,  altogether  empty.  They 
stayed  there.  Suddenly  in  the  dead  of  the  night  loud  noises 
alarmed  them.  Thor  grasped  his  hammer ;  stood  in  the  door, 
prepared  for  fight.  His  companions  within  ran  hither  and 
thither  in  their  terror,  seeking  some  outlet  in  that  rude 
hall ;  they  found  a  little  closet  at  last,  and  took  refuge  there. 
Neither  had  Thor  any  battle  :  for,  lo,  in  the  morning  it  turned- 
out  that  the  noise  had  been  only  the  snoring  of  a  certain  enor- 
mous but  peaceable  giant,  the  Giant  Skrymir,  who  lay  peace- 
ably sleeping  near  by  ;  and  this  that  they  took  for  a  house 
was  merely  his  glove,  thrown  aside  there  ;  the  door  was  the 
glove-wrist ;  the  little  closet  they  had  fled  into  was  the  thumb  ! 
Such  a  glove  ; — I  remark  too  that  it  had  not  fingers  as  ours 
have,  but  only  a  thumb,  and  the  rest  undivided  :  a  most  an- 
cient, rustic  glove ! 

Skrymir  now  carried  their  portmanteau  all  day  ;  Thor,  how- 
ever, had  his  own  suspicions,  did  not  like  the  ways  of  Skrymir  ; 
determined  at  night  to  put  an  end  to  him  as  he  slept.  Rais- 
ing his  hammer,  he  struck  down  into  the  giant's  face  a  right 
thunderbolt  blow,  of  force  to  rend  rocks.  The  giant  merely 
awoke  ;  rubbed  his  cheek,  and  said,  Did  a  leaf  fall  ?  Again 
Thor  struck,  so  soon  as  Skrymir  again  slept ;  a  better  blow 
than  before  ;  but  the  giant  only  murmured,  "Was  that  a  grain 
of  sand  ?  Thor's  third  stroke  was  with  both  his  hands  (the 
"  knuckles  white  "  I  suppose),  and  seemed  to  dint  deep  into 
Skrymir's  visage ;  but  he  merely  checked  his  snore,  and  re- 
marked, There  must  be  sparrows  roosting  in  this  tree,  I  think ; 
what  is  that  they  have  dropt  ? — At  the  gate  of  Utgard,  a  place 
so  high  that  you  had  to  "strain  your  neck  bending  back  to 
see  the  top  of  it,"  Skrymir  went  his  ways.  Thor  and  his  com- 
panions were  admitted  ;  invited  to  take  share  in  the  games 
going  on.  To  Thor,  for  his  part,  they  handed  a  drinking- 
horn  ;  it  was  a  common  feat,  they  told  him,  to  drink  this  dry 
at  one  draught  Long  and  fiercely,  three  times  over,  Thor 
drank :  but  made  hardly  any  impression.  He  was  a  weak 
child,  they  told  him ;  could  he  lift  that  cat  he  saw  there  ? 


40  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

Small  as  the  feat  seemed,  Tlior  with  his  whole  god-like  strength 
could  not ;  he  bent-up  the  creature's  back,  could  not  raise  its 
feet  off  the  ground,  could  at  the  utmost  raise  one  foot.  Why, 
you  are  no  man,  said  the  Utgard  people ;  there  is  an  old 
woman  that  will  wrestle  you  !  Thor,  heartily  ashamed,  seized 
this  haggard  old  woman  ;  but  could  not  throw  her. 

And  now,  on  their  quitting  Utgard,  the  chief  Jotun,  escort- 
ing them  politely  a  little  way,  said  to  Thor  :  "  You  are  beaten 
then  : — yet  be  not  so  much  ashamed  ;  there  was  deception  of 
appearance  in  it.  That  horn  you  tried  to  drink  was  the  sea  ; 
you  did  make  it  ebb  ;  but  who  could  drink  that,  the  bottom- 
less !  The  cat  you  would  have  lifted, — why,  that  is  the  mid- 
gard  snake,  the  great  world  serpent,  which,  tail  in  mouth, 
girds  and  keeps-up,  the  whole  created  world  ;  had  you  torn 
that  up,  the  world  must  have  rushed  to  ruin  !  As  for  the  old 
woman,  she  was  time,  old  age,  duration  :  with  her  what  can 
wrestle?  No  man  nor  no  god  with  her;  gods  or  men,  she 
prevails  over  all !  And  then  those  three  strokes  you  struck, — 
look  at  these  three  valleys  ;  your  three  strokes  made  these  !  " 
Thor  looked  at  his  attendant  Jotun  :  it  was  Skryrnir  ; — it  was, 
say  Norse  critics,  the  old  chaotic  rocky  earth  in  person,  and 
that  glove-Tiowse  was  some  earth-cavern  !  But  Skrymir  had 
vanished  ;  Utgard  with  its  skyhigh  gates,  when  Thor  grasped 
his  hammer  to  smite  them,  had  gone  to  air  ;  only  the  giant's 
voice  was  heard  mocking  :  "  Better  come  no  more  to  Jotun- 
heirn  !  " — 

This  is  of  the  allegoric  period,  as  we  see,  and  half  play,  not 
of  the  prophetic  and  entirely  devout :  but  as  a  mythus  is 
there  not  real  antique  Norse  gold  in  it  ?  More  true  metal, 
rough  from  the  mimer-stithy,  than  in  many  a  famed  Greek 
mythus  shaped  far  better  !  A  great  broad  Brobdignag  grin 
of  true  humor  is  in  this  Skrymir  ;  mirth  resting  on  earnest- 
ness and  sadness,  as  the  rainbow  on  black  tempest :  only  a 
right  valiant  heart  is  capable  of  that.  It  is  the  grim  humor 
of  our  own  Ben  Jonson,  rare  old  Ben  ;  runs  in  the  blood  of  us, 
I  fancy ;  for  one  catches  tones  of  it,  under  a  still  other  shape, 
out  of  the  American  backwoods. 

That  is  also  a  very  striking  conception  that  of  the  Ragnardk, 


TEE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  41 

consummation,  or  twilight  of  the  gods.  It  is  in  the  Voluspa 
song  ;  seemingly  a  very  old  prophetic  idea.  The  gods  and 
Jutuns,  the  divine  powers  and  the  chaotic  brute  ones,  after  long 
contest  and  partial  victory  by  the  former,  meet  at  last  in  uni- 
versal world-embracing  wrestle  and  duel ;  world  serpent  against 
Thor,  strength  against  strength ;  mutually  extinctive  ;  and 
ruin,  "  twilight "  sinking  into  darkness,  swallows  the  created 
universe.  The  old  universe  with  its  gods  is  sunk  ;  but  it  is 
not  final  death  :  there  is  to  be  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth ; 
a  higher  supreme  god,  and  justice  to  reign  among  men. 
Curious  :  this  law  of  mutation,  which  also  is  a  law  written  in 
man's  inmost  thought,  had  been  deciphered  by  these  old 
earnest  thinkers  in  their  rude  style  ;  and  how,  though  all 
dies,  and  even  gods  die,  yet  all  death  is  but  a  phoenix  fire- 
death,  and  new-birth  into  the  greater  and  the  better !  It  is 
the  fundamental  law  of  being  .for  a  creature  made  of  time,  liv- 
ing in  this  place  of  hope.  All  earnest  men  have  seen  into  it ; 
may  still  see  into  it. 

And  now,  connected  with  this,  let  us  glance  at  the  last 
mythus  of  the  appearance  of  Thor ;  and  end  there.  I  fancy 
it  to  be  the  latest  in  date  of  all  these  fables ;  a  sorrowing 
protest  against  the  advance  of  Christianity, — set  forth  re- 
proachfully by  some  conservative  pagan.  King  Olaf  has  been 
harshly  blamed  for  his  over-zeal  in  introducing  Christianity  ; 
surely  I  should  have  blamed  him  far  more  for  an  under-zeal 
in  that !  He  paid  dear  enough  for  it ;  he  died  by  the  revolt 
of  his  pagan  people,  in  battle,  in  the  year  1033,  at  Stickelstad, 
near  that  Drontheim,  where  the  chief  cathedral  of  the  north 
has  now  stood  for  many  centuries,  dedicated  gratefully  to  his 
memory  as  Saint  Olaf.  The  mythus  about  Thor  is  to  this 
effect.  King  Olaf,  the  Christian  reform  king,  is  sailing  with 
fit  escort  along  the  shore  of  Norway,  from  haven  to  haven  ; 
dispensing  justice,  or  doing  other  royal  work  :  on  leaving  a 
certain  haven,  it  is  found  that  a  stranger,  of  grave  eyes  and 
aspect,  red  beard,  of  stately  robust  figure,  has  stept  in.  The 
courtiers  address  him  ;  his  answers  surprise  by  their  perti- 
nency and  depth  :  at  length  he  is  brought  to  the  king.  The 
stranger's  conversation  here  is  not  less  remarkable,  as  they 


4:2  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

sail  along  the  beautiful  shore  ;  but  after  some  time,  ho  ad- 
dresses King  Olaf  thus  :  "  Yes,  King  Olaf,  it  is  all  beautiful, 
with  the  sun  shining  on  it  there  ;  green,  fruitful,  a  right  fair 
home  for  you  ;  and  many  a  sore  day  had  Thor,  many  a  wild 
fight  with  the  rock  Jotuns,  before  he  could  make  it  so.  And 
now  you  seem  minded  to  put  away  Thor.  King  Olaf,  have  a 
care  ! "  said  the  stranger,  drawing-down  his  brows  ; — and 
when  they  looked  again,  he  was  nowhere  to  be  found.— This 
is  the  last  appearance  of  Thor  on  the  stage  of  this  world  ! 

Do  we  not  see  well  enough  how  the  fable  might  arise,  with- 
out unveracity  on  the  part  of  any  one  ?  It  is  the  way  most 
gods  have  come  to  appear  among  men  ;  thus,  if  in  Pindar's 
time  "  Neptune  was  seen  once  at  the  Nemean  games,"  what 
was  this  Neptune  too  but  a  "  stranger  of  noble  grave  as- 
pect,"— fit  to  be  "  seen !  "  There  is  something  pathetic, 
tragic  for  me  in  this  last  voice  of  paganism.  Thor  is  van- 
ished, the  whole  Norse  world  has  vanished  ;  and  will  not 
return  ever  again.  In  like  fashion  to  that  pass  away  the  high- 
est things.  All  things  that  have  been  in  this  world,  all 
things  that  are  or  wih1  be  in  it,  have  to  vanish :  we  have  our 
sad  farewell  to  give  them. 

That  Norse  religion,  a  rude  but  earnest,  sternly  impressive 
consecration  of  valor  (so  we  may  define  it),  sufficed  for  these 
old  valiant  northmen.  Consecration  of  valor  is  not  a  bad 
thing !  We  will  take  it  for  good,  so  far  as  it  goes.  Neither  is 
there  no  use  in  knowing  something  about  this  old  paganism 
of  our  fathers.  Unconsciously,  and  combined  with  higher 
things,  it  is  in  us  yet,  that  old  faith  withal !  To  know  it  con- 
sciously, brings  us  into  closer  and  clearer  relation  with  the 
past, — with  our  own  possessions  in  the  past.  For  the  whole 
past,  as  I  keep  repeating,  is  the  possession  of  the  present ;  the 
past  had  always  something  true,  and  is  a  precious  possession. 
In  a  different  time,  in  a  different  place,  it  is  always  some 
other  side  of  our  common  human  nature  that  has  been  de- 
veloping itself.  The  actual  true  is  the  sum  of  all  these  ;  not 
any  one  of  them  by  itself  constitutes  what  of  human  nature  is 
hitherto  developed.  Better  to  know  them  all  than  misknow 
them.  "To  which  of  these  three  religions  do  you  specially  ad- 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  43 

here  ?  "  inquires  Meister  of  his  teacher.  "  To  all  the  three !  " 
answers  the  other  :  "  To  all  the  three ;  for  they  by  their  union 
first  constitute  the  true  religion." 


LECTURE  IL 

THE    HERO   AS    PEOPHET.       MOHA^niED  '.    ISLAM. 

[Friday,  8th  May,  1840.] 

From  the  first  rude  times  of  paganism  among  the  Scandi- 
navians in  the  north,  we  advance  to  a  very  different  epoch  of 
religion,  among  a  very  different  people  :  Mohammedanism 
among  the  Arabs.  A  great  change  ;  what  a  change  and  pro- 
gress is  indicated  here,  in  the  universal  condition  and  thoughts 
of  men  ! 

The  hero  is  not  now  regarded  as  a  god  among  his  fellow- 
men  ;  but  as  one  god-inspired,  as  a  prophet.  It  is  the  second 
phasis  of  hero-worship  :  the  first  or  oldest,  we  may  say,  has 
passed  away  without  return ;  in  the  history  of  the  world  there 
will  not  again  be  any  man,  never  so  great,  whom  his  fellow- 
men  will  take  for  a  god.  Nay  we  might  rationally  ask,  did  any 
set  of  human  beings  ever  really  think  the  man  they  saw  there 
standing  beside  them  a  god,  the  maker  of  this  world  ?  Per- 
haps not :  it  was  usually  some  man  they  remembered,  or  had 
seen.  But  neither  can  this  any  more  be.  The  great  man  is 
not  recognized  henceforth  as  a  god  any  more. 

It  was  a  rude  gross  error,  that  of  counting  the  great  man  a  god. 
Yet  let  us  say  that  it  is  at  all  times  difficult  to  know  it-hat  he 
is,  or  how  to  account  of  him  and  receive  him  !  The  most  sig- 
nificant feature  in  the  history  of  an  epoch  is  the  manner  it  has 
of  welcoming  a  great  man.  Ever,  to  the  true  instincts  of  men, 
there  is  something  godlike  in  him.  Whether  they  shall  take 
him  to  be  a  god,  to  be  a  prophet,  or  what  they  shall  take  him 
to  be  ?  that  is  ever  a  grand  question  ;  by  their  way  of  answer- 
ing that,  we  shall  see,  as  through  a  little  window,  into  the  very 
heart  of  these  men's  spiritual  condition.  For  at  bottom  the 
great  man,  as  he  comes  from  the  hand  of  nature,  is  ever  the 


44:  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

same  kind  of  thing  ;  Odin,  Luther,  Johnson,  Burns  ;  I  hope 
to  make  it  appear  that  these  are  all  originally  of  one  stuff; 
that  only  by  the  world's  reception  of  them,  and  the  shapes  they 
assume,  are  they  so  immeasurably  diverse.  The  worship  of 
Odin  astonishes  us, — to  fall  prostrate  before  the  great  man, 
into  ddiquium  of  love  and  wonder  over  him,  and  feel  in  their 
hearts  that  he  was  a  denizen  of  the  skies,  a  god  !  This  was 
imperfect  enough :  but  to  welcome,  for  example,  a  Burns  as 
we  did,  was  that  what  we  can  call  perfect  ?  The  most  pre- 
cious gift  that  heaven  can  give  to  the  earth  ;  a  man  of  "  gen- 
ius "  as  we  call  it ;  the  soul  of  a  man  actually  sent  down  from 
the  skies  with  a  god's-message  to  us, — this  we  waste  away 
as  an  idle  artificial  firework,  sent  to  amuse  us  a  little,  and 
sink  it  into  ashes,  wreck  and  ineffectuality  :  such  reception  of 
a  great  man  I  do  not  call  very  perfect  either  !  Looking  into 
the  heart  of  the  thing,  one  may  perhaps  call  that  of  Burns  a 
still  uglier  phenomenon,  betokening  still  sadder  imperfections 
in  mankind's  ways,  than  the  Scandinavian  method  itself.  To 
fall  into  mere  unreasoning  deliquium  of  love  and  admiration, 
was  not  good  ;  but  such  unreasoning,  nay  irrational  supercili- 
ous no-love  at  all  is  perhaps  still  worse  ! — It  is  a  thing  for- 
ever changing,  this  of  hero-worship  :  different  in  each  age, 
difficult  to  do  well  in  any  age.  Indeed,  the  heart  of  the  whole 
business  of  the  age,  one  may  say,  is  to  do  it  well. 

"We  have  chosen  Mohammed  not  as  the  most  eminent 
prophet ;  but  as  the  one  we  are  freest  to  speak  of.  He  is  by 
no  means  the  truest  of  prophets  ;  but  I  do  esteem  him  a  true 
one.  Farther,  as  there  is  no  danger  of  our  becoming,  any  of 
us,  Mohammedans,  I  mean  to  say  all  the  good  of  him  I  justly 
can.  It  is  the  way  to  get  at  his  secret :  let  us  try  to  under- 
stand what  he  meant  with  the  world  ;  what  the  world  meant 
and  means  with  him,  will  then  be  a  more  answerable  question. 
Our  current  hypothesis  about  Mohammed,  that  he  was  a  schem- 
ing impostor,  a  falsehood  incarnate,  that  his  religion  is  a  mere 
mass  of  quackery  and  fatuity,  begins  really  to  be  now  untena- 
ble to  any  one.  The  lies,  which  well- in  caning  zeal  has  heaped 
round  this  man,  are  disgraceful  to  ourselves  only.  AVhen  Po- 
cocke  inquired  of  Grotius,  where  the  proof  was  of  that  story 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  45 

of  the  pigeon,  trained  to  pick  peas  from  Mohammed's  ear,  and 
pass  for  an  angel  dictating  to  him  ?  Grotius  answered  that 
there  was  no  proof  !  It  is  really  time  to  dismiss  all  that  The 
•word  this  man  spoke  has  been  the  lif  e-guidance  now  of  a  hun- 
dred-and-eighty  millions  of  men  these  twelve-hundred  years. 
These  hundred-and-eighty  millions  were  made  by  God  as  well 
as  we.  A  greater  number  of  God's  creatures  believe  in  Mo- 
hammed's at  this  hour  than  in  any  other  word  whatever.  Are 
we  to  suppose  that  it  was  a  miserable  piece  of  spiritual  leger- 
demain, this  which  so  many  creatures  of  the  Almighty  have 
lived  by  and  died  by  ?  I,  for  rny  part,  cannot  form  any  such 
supposition,  I  will  believe  most  things  sooner  than  that.  One 
•would  be  entirely  at  a  loss  what  to  think  of  this  world  at  all, 
if  quackery  so  grew  and  were  sanctioned  here. 

Alas,  such  theories  are  very  lamentable.  If  we  would  at- 
tain to  knowledge  of  anything  in  God's  true  creation,  let  us 
disbelieve  them  wholly !  They  are  the  product  of  an  age  of 
scepticism  ;  they  indicate  the  saddest  spiritual  paralysis,  and 
mere  death-life  of  the  souls  of  men ;  more  godless  theory,  I 
think,  was  never  promulgated  in  this  earth.  A  false  man 
found  a  religion?  Why,  a  false  man  cannot  build  a  brick 
house  ?  If  he  do  not  know  and  follow  truly  the  properties  of 
mortar,  burnt  clay  and  what  else  he  works  in,  it  is  no  house 
that  he  makes,  but  a  rubbish-heap.  It  will  not  stand  for 
twelve  centuries,  to  lodge  a  hundred-and-eighty  millions  ;  it 
will  fall  straightway.  A  man  must  conform  himself  to  nature's 
laws,  be  verily  in  communion  with  nature  and  the  truth  of 
things,  or  nature  will  answer  him,  no,  not  at  all !  Speciositics 
are  specious — ah  me  ! — a  Cagliostro,  many  Cagliostros,  promi- 
nent world  leaders,  do  prosper  by  their  quackeiy,  for  a  day. 
It  is  like  a  forged  bank-note  ;  they  get  it  passed  out  of  their 
worthless  hands  :  others,  not  they,  have  to  smart  for  it  Na- 
ture bursts-up  in  fire-flames,  French  Kevolutions,  and  suchlike, 
proclaiming  with  terrible  veracity  that  forged  notes  are  forged. 

But  of  a  great  man  especially,  of  him  I  will  venture  to  assert 
that  it  is  incredible  he  should  have  been  other  than  true.  It 
seems  to  me  the  primary  foundation  of  him,  and  of  all  that 
can  lie  in  him,  this.  No  Mirabeau,  Napoleon,  Burns,  Crom- 


4:6  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

well,  no  man  adequate  to  do  anything,  but  is  first  of  all  in 
right  earnest  about  it ;  what  I  call  a  sincere  man.  I  should 
say  sincerity,  a  deep,  great,  genuine  sincerity,  is  the  first 
characteristic  of  all  men  in  any  way  heroic.  Not  the  sincerity 
that  calls  itself  sincere  ;  ah  no,  that  is  a  very  poor  matter  in- 
deed ; — a  shallow  braggart  conscious  sincerity  ;  oftenest  self- 
conceit  mainly.  The  great  man's  sincerity  is  of  the  kind  he 
cannot  speak  of,  is  not  conscious  of :  nay,  I  suppose,  he  is 
conscious  rather  of  ^sincerity  ;  for  what  man  can  walk  accu- 
rately by  the  law  of  truth  for  one  day  ?  No,  the  great  man 
does  not  boast  himself  sincere,  far  from  that ;  perhaps  does 
not  ask  himself  if  he  is  so :  I  would  say  rather,  his  sincerity 
does  not  depend  on  himself  ;  he  cannot  help  being  sincere  ! 
The  great  fact  of  existence  is  great  to  him.  Fly  as  he  Avill,  he 
cannot  get  out  of  the  awful  presence  of  this  reality.  His  mind 
is  so  made  ;  he  is  great  by  that,  first  of  all.  Fearful  and  won- 
derful, real  as  life,  real  as  death,  is  this  universe  to  him. 
Though  all  men  should  forget  its  truth,  and  walk  in  a  vain 
show,  he  cannot.  At  all  moments  the  flame-image  glares-in 
upon  him  ;  undeniable,  there,  there  ! — I  wish  you  to  take  this 
as  my  primary  definition  of  a  great  man.  A  little  man  may 
have  this,  it  is  competent  to  all  men  that  God  has  made  :  but 
a  great  man  cannot  be  without  it. 

Such  a  man  is  what  we  call  an  original  man  ;  he  comes  to 
us  at  first-hand.  A  messenger  he,  sent  from  the  infinite  un- 
known with  tidings  to  us.  We  may  call  him  poet,  prophet, 
god, — in  one  way  or  other,  we  all  feel  that  the  words  he  utters 
are  as  no  other  man's  words.  Direct  from  the  inner  fact  of 
things ; — he  lives,  and  has  to  live,  in  daily  communion  with 
that.  Hearsays  cannot  hide  it  from  him  ;  he  is  blind,  home- 
less, miserable,  following  hearsays  ;  it  glares-in  upon  him. 
Really  his  utterances,  are  they  not  a  kind  of  "  revelation  ;  "- 
what  we  must  call  such  for  want  of  some  other  name  ?  It  is 
from  the  heart  of  the  world  that  he  comes ;  he  is  portion  of 
the  primal  reality  of  things.  God  has  made  many  revelations  : 
but  this  man  too,  has  not  God  made  him,  the  latest  and  new- 
est of  all  ?  The  "  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  giveth  him  un- 
derstanding : "  we  must  listen  before  all  to  him. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  47 

Tins  Mohammed,  then,  we  will  in  no  wise  consider  as  an 
inanity  theatricality,  a  poor  conscious  ambitious  schemer  ;  we 
cannot  conceive  him  so.  The  rude  message  he  delivered  was 
a  real  one  withal ;  an  earnest  confused  voice  from  the  un- 
known deep.  The  man's  words  were  not  false,  nor  his  work- 
ings here  below  ;  no  inanity  and  simulacrum  ;  a  fiery  mass  of 
life  cast  up  from  the  great  bosom  of  nature  herself.  To  kindle 
the  world  ;  the  world's  maker  had  ordered  it  so.  Neither  can 
the  faults,  imperfections,  insincerities  even,  of  Mohammed,  if 
such  were  never  so  well  proved  against  him,  shake  this  pri- 
mary fact  about  him. 

On  the  whole,  we  make  too  much  of  faults  ;  the  details  of 
the  business  hide  the  real  center  of  it.  Faults  ?  The  great- 
est of  faults,  I  should  say,  is  to  be  conscious  of  none.  Readers 
of  the  Bible  above  all,  one  would  think,  might  know  better. 
Who  is  called  there  "  the  man  according  to  God's  own  heart  ?  " 
David,  the  Hebrew  king,  had  fallen  into  sins  enough  ;  blackest 
crimes ;  there  was  no  want  of  sins.  And  thereupon  the  un- 
believers sneer  and  ask,  is  this  your  man  according  to  God's 
heart  ?  The  sneer,  I  must  say,  seems  to  me  but  a  shallow  one. 
What  are  faults,  what  are  the  outward  details  of  a  life  ;  if  the 
inner  secret  of  it,  the  remorse,  temptations,  true,  often-baffled, 
never-ended  struggle  of  it,  be  forgotten  ?  "  It  is  not  in  man 
that  walketh  to  direct  his  steps."  Of  all  acts,  is  not,  for  a 
man,  repentance  the  most  divine?  The  deadliest  sin,  I  say, 
were  that  same  supercilious  consciousness  of  no  sin  ; — that  is 
death  ;  the  heart  so  conscious  is  divorced  from  sincerity, 
humility  and  fact ;  is  dead  :  it  is  "  pure  "  as  dead  dry  sand  is 
pure.  David's  life  and  history,  as  written  for  us  in  those  psalms 
of  his,  I  consider  to  be  the  truest  emblem  ever  given  of  a  man's 
moral  progress  and  warfare  here  below.  All  earnest  souls  will 
ever  discern  in  it  the  faithful  struggle  of  an  earnest  human 
soul  towards  what  is  good  and  best.  Struggle  often  baffled, 
sorely  baffled,  down  as  into  entire  wreck  ;  yet  a  struggle  never 
ended  ;  ever,  with  tears,  repentance,  true  unconquerable  pur- 
pose, begun  anew.  Poor  human  nature  !  Is  not  a  man's 
walking,  in  truth,  always  that :  "  a  succession  of  falls?  "  Man 
can  do  no  other.  In  this  wild  element  of  a  life,  he  has  to 


48  HEROES  AND  IIERO  -  WORSHIP. 

struggle  onwards  ;  now  fallen,  deep-abased  ;  and  ever,  with 
tears,  repentance,  with  bleeding  heart,  he  has  to  rise  again, 
struggle  again  still  onwards.  That  his  struggle  be  a  faithful 
unconquerable  one :  that  is  the  question  of  questions.  We 
will  put  up  with  many  sad  details,  if  the  soul  of  it  were  true. 
Details  by  themselves  will  never  teach  us  what  it  is.  I  believe 
we  misestimate  Mohammed's  faults  even  as  faults  :  but  the 
secret  of  him  will  never  be  got  by  dwelling  there.  "We  will 
leave  all  this  behind  us  ;  and  assuring  ourselves  that  he  did 
mean  some  true  thing,  ask  candidly  what  it  was  or  might  be. 

These  Arabs  Mohammed  was  born  among  are  certainly  a 
notable  people.  Their  country  itself  is  notable  ;  the  fit  habi- 
tation for  such  a  race.  Savage  inaccessible  rock-mountains, 
great  grim  deserts,  alternating  with  beautiful  strips  of  verd- 
ure :  wherever  water  is,  there  is  greenness,  beauty ;  odorif- 
erous balm-shrubs,  date-trees,  frankincense-trees.  Consider 
that  wide  waste  horizon  of  sand,  empty,  silent,  like  a  sand-sea, 
dividing  habitable  place  from  habitable.  You  are  all  alone 
there,  left  alone  with  the  universe  ;  by  day  a  fierce  sun  blaz- 
ing down  on  it  with  intolerable  radiance  ;  by  night  the  great 
deep  heaven  with  its  stars.  Such  a  country  is  fit  for  a  swift- 
handed,  deep-hearted  race  of  men.  There  is  something  most 
agile,  active,  and  yet  most  meditative,  enthusiastic  in  the 
Arab  character.  The  Persians  are  called  the  French  of  the 
east ;  we  will  call  the  Arabs  oriental  Italians.  A  gifted  noble 
people  ;  a  people  of  wild  strong  feelings,  and  of  iron  restraint 
over  these  :  the  characteristic  of  noblemindedness,  of  genius. 
The  wild  Bedouin  welcomes  the  stranger  to  his  tent,  as  one 
having  right  to  all  that  is  there  ;  were  it  his  worst  enemy,  he 
will  slay  his  foal  to  treat  him,  will  serve  him  with  sacred  hos- 
pitality for  three  days,  will  set  him  fairly  on  his  way  ; — and 
then,  by  another  law  as  sacred,  kill  him  if  he  can.  In  words 
too,  as  in  action.  They  are  not  a  loquacious  people,  taciturn 
rather  ;  but  eloquent,  gifted  when  they  do  speak.  An  ear- 
nest, truthful  kind  of  men.  They  are,  as  we  know,  of  Jewish 
kindred  :  but  with  that  deadly  terrible  earnestness  of  the  Jews 
they  seem  to  combine  something  graceful,  brilliant,  which  is 


THE  UERO  AS  PROPHET.  49 

not  Jewish.  They  had  "  poetic  contests  "  among  them  before 
the  time  of  Mohammed.  Sale  says,  at  Ocadh,  in  the  south  of 
Arabia,  there  were  yearly  fairs,  and  there,  when  the  merchan- 
dizing was  done,  poets  sang  for  prizes : — the  wild  people 
gathered  to  hear  that. 

One  Jewish  quality  these  Arabs  manifest ;  the  outcome  of 
many  or  of  all  high  qualities :  Avhat  we  may  call  religiosity. 
From  of  old  they  had  been  zealous  worshipers,  according  to 
their  light.  They  worshiped  the  stars,  as  Sabeans  ;  wor- 
shiped many  natural  objects, — recognized  them  as  symbols, 
immediate  manifestations,  of  the  Maker  of  nature.  It  was 
wrong  ;  and  yet  not  wholly  wrong.  All  God's  works  are  still 
in  a  sense  rymbols  of  God.  Do  we  not,  as  I  urged,  still 
account  it  a  merit  to  recognize  a  certain  inexhaustible  signifi- 
cance, "  poetic  beauty  "  as  we  name  it,  in  all  natural  objects 
whatsoever  ?  A  man  is  a  poet,  and  honored,  for  doing  that, 
and  speaking  or  singing  it, — a  kind  of  diluted  worship.  They 
had  many  prophets,  these  Arabs  ;  teachers  each  to  his  tribe, 
each  according  to  the  light  he  had.  But  indeed,  have  we  not 
from  of  old  the  noblest  of  proofs,  still  palpable  to  every  one 
of  us,  of  what  devoutness  and  noblemindedness  had  dwelt  in 
these  rustic  thoughtful  peoples  ?  Biblical  critics  seem  agreed 
that  our  own  "  Book  of  Job  "  was  written  in  that  region  of  the 
world.  I  call  that,  apart  from  all  theories  about  it,  one  of  the 
grandest  things  ever  written  with  pen.  One  feels,  indeed,  as 
if  it  were  not  Hebrew  ;  such  a  noble  universality,  different 
from  noble  patriotism  or  sectarianism,  reigns  in  it.  A  noble 
book  ;  ah1  men's  book  !  It  is  our  first,  oldest  statement  of  the 
never-ending  problem, — man's  destiny,  and  God's  ways  with 
him  here  in  this  earth.  And  all  in  such  free  flowing  outlines  ; 
grand  in  its  sincerity,  in  its  simplicity  ;  in  its  epic  melody, 
and  repose  of  reconcilement.  There  is  the  seeing  eye,  the 
mildly  understanding  heart.  So  true  everyway  ;  true  eyesight 
and  vision  for  all  things  ;  material  things  no  less  than  spirit- 
ual :  the  horse, — "hast  thou  clothed  his  neck  with  thunder?" 
— he  "  laughs  at  the  shaking  of  the  spear!"  Such  living 
likenesses  were  never  since  drawn.  Sublime  sorrow,  subli-*^ 
reconciliation  ;  oldest  choral  melody  as  of  the  heart  of  m;  * 
4 


50  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

kind  ; — so  soft,  and  great ;  as  the  summer  midnight,  as  the 
world  with  its  seas  and  stars !  There  is  nothing  "written,  I 
think,  in  the  Bible  or  out  of  it,  of  equal  literary  merit. — 

To  the  idolatrous  Arabs  one  of  the  most  ancient  universal 
objects  of  worship  was  that  black  stone,  still  kept  in  the 
building  called  Caabah  at  Mecca.  Diodorus  Siculus  mentions 
this  Caabah  in  a  way  not  to  be  mistaken,  as  the  oldest,  most 
honored  temple  in  his  time  ;  that  is,  some  half-century  before 
our  era.  Silvestre  de  Sacy  says  there  is  some  likelihood  that 
the  black  stone  is  an  aerolite.  In  that  case,  some  man  might 
see  it  fall  out  of  heaven  !  It  stands  now  beside  the  well  Zem- 
zen  ;  the  Caabah  is  built  over  both.  A  well  is  in  all  places  a 
beautiful  affecting  object,  gushing  out  like  life  from  the  hard 
earth  ; — still  more  so  in  those  hot  dry  countries,  where  it  is 
the  first  condition  of  being.  The  well  Zemzen  has  its  name 
from  the  bubbling  sound  of  the  waters,  zem-zem  ;  they  think 
it  is  the  well  which  Hagar  found  with  her  little  Ishmael  in 
the  wilderness :  the  aerolite  and  it  have  been  sacred  now,  and 
had  a  Caabah  over  them,  for  thousands  of  years.  A  curious 
object,  that  Caabah !  There  it  stands  at  this  hour,  in  the 
black  cloth-covering  the  sultan  sends  it  yearly  ;  "  twenty- 
seven  cubits  high  ;  "  with  circuit,  with  double  circuit  of  pillars, 
with  festoon-rows  of  lamps  and  quaint  ornaments  :  the  lamps 
will  be  lighted  again  this  night ; — to  glitter  again  under  the 
stars.  An  authentic  fragment  of  the  oldest  past.  It  is  the 
Keblah  of  all  Moslem  :  from  Delhi  all  onwards  to  Morocco, 
the  eyes  of  innumerable  praying  men  are  turned  toward  it, 
five  times,  this  day  and  all  days ;  one  of  the  notablest  centres 
in  the  habitation  of  men. 

It  had  been  from  the  sacredness  attached  to  this  Caabah 
stone  and  Hagar's  well,  from  the  pilgrimings  of  all  tribes  of 
Arabs  thither,  that  Mecca  took  its  rise  as  a  town.  A  great 
town  once,  though  much  decayed  now.  It  has  no  natural  ad- 
vantage for  a  town  ;  stands  in  a  sandy  hollow  amid  bare 
barren  hills,  at  a  distance  from  the  sea  ;  its  provisions,  its 
very  bread,  have  to  be  imported.  But  so  many  pilgrims, 
needed  lodgings  ;  and  then  all  places  of  pilgrimage  do,  from 
the  first,  become  places  of  trade.  The  first  day  pilgrims 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  51 

meet,  merchants  have  also  met :  where  men  see  themselves 
assembled  for  one  object,  they  find  that  they  can  accomplish 
other  objects  which  depend  on  meeting  together.  Mecca 
became  the  fair  of  ah1  Arabia.  And  thereby  indeed  the  chief 
staple  and  warehouse  of  whatever  commerce  there  was  between 
the  Indian  and  the  western  countries,  Syria,  Egypt,  even  Italy. 
It  had  at  one  time  a  population  of  100,000  ;  buyers,  forward- 
ers of  those  eastern  and  western  products  ;  importers  for  their 
own  behoof  of  provisions  and  corn.  The  government  was  a 
kind  of  irregular  aristocratic  republic,  not  without  a  touch  of 
theocracy.  Ten  men  of  a  chief  tribe,  chosen  in  some  rough 
way,  were  governors  of  Mecca,  and  keepers  of  the  Caabah. 
The  Koreish  were  the  chief  tribe  in  Mohammed's  time  ;  his 
own  family  was  of  that  tribe.  The  rest  of  the  nation,  frac- 
tioned  and  cut-asunder  by  deserts,  lived  under  similar  rude 
patriarchal  governments  by  one  or  several :  herdsmen,  car- 
riers, traders,  generally  robbers  too  ;  being  ofteuest  at  war 
one  with  another,  or  with  all  :  held  together  by  no  open  bond, 
if  it  were  not  this  meeting  at  the  Caabah,  where  all  forms  of 
Arab  idolatry  assembled  in  common  adoration  ; — held  mainly 
by  the  inward  indissoluble  bond  of  a  common  blood  and  lan- 
guage. In  this  way  had  the  Arabs  lived  for  long  ages,  unno- 
ticed by  the  world  ;  a  people  of  great  qualities,  unconsciously 
waiting  foi>  the  day  when  they  should  become  notable  to  all 
the  world.  Their  idolatries  appear  to  have  been  in  a  totter- 
ing state  ;  much  was  getting  into  confusion  and  fermentation 
among  them.  Obscure  tidings  of  the  most  important  event 
ever  transacted  in  this  world,  the  life  and  death  of  the  divine 
man  in  Judea,  at  once  the  symptom  and  cause  of  immeasur- 
able change  to  all  people  in  the  world,  had  in  the  course  of 
centuries  reached  into  Arabia  too  ;  and  could  not  but,  of  itself, 
have  produced  fermentation  there. 

It  was  among  this  Arab  people,  so  circumstanced,  in  the 
year  570  of  our  era,  that  the  man  Mohammed  was  born.  He 
was  of  the  family  of  Hashem,  of  the  Koreish  tribe  as  we  said ; 
though  poor,  connected  with  the  chief  persons  of  his  country. 
Almost  at  his  birth  he  lost  his  father  ;  at  the  age  of  six  years 


52  HEROES  AND  IIERO  -  WORSHIP. 

his  mother  too,  a  woman  noted  for  her  beauty,  her  worth  and 
sense  :  he  fell  to  the  charge  of  his  grandfather,  an  old  man,  a 
hundred  years  old.  A  good  old  man  :  Mohammed's  father, 
Abdallah,  had  been  his  youngest  favorite  son.  He  saw  in 
Mohammed,  with  his  old  life-worn  eyes,  a  century  old,  the 
lost  Abdallah  come  back  again,  all  that  was  left  of  Abdallah. 
He  loved  the  little  orphan  boy  greatly  ;  used  to  say,  they 
must  take  care  of  that  beautiful  little  boy,  nothing  in  their 
kindred  was  more  precious  than  he.  At  his  death,  while  the 
boy  was  still  but  two  years  old,  he  left  him  in  charge  to  Abu 
Thaleb,  the  eldest  of  the  uncles,  as  to  him  that  now  was  head 
of  the  house.  By  this  uncle,  a  just  and  rational  man  as  every- 
thing betokens,  Mohammed  was  brought-up  in  the  best  Arab 
way. 

Mohammed,  as  he  grew  up,  accompanied  his  uncle  on  trad- 
ing journeys  and  suchlike  ;  in  his  eighteenth  year  one  finds 
him  a  fighter  following  his  uncle  in  war.  But  perhaps  the 
most  significant  of  all  his  journeys  is  one  we  find  noted  as  of 
some  years'  earlier  date  :  a  journey  to  the  fairs  of  Syria.  The 
young  man  here  first  came  in  contact  with  a  quite  foreign 
world, — with  one  foreign  element  of  endless  moment  to  him  : 
the  Christian  Religion.  I  know  not  what  to  make  of  that 
"  Sergius,  the  Nestorian  Monk,"  whom  Abu  Thaleb  and  he 
are  said  to  have  lodged  with  ;  or  how  much  any  monk  could 
have  taught  one  still  so  young.  Probably  enough  it  is  greatly 
exaggerated,  this  of  the  Nestorian  monk.  Mohammed  was 
only  fourteen  ;  had  no  language  but  his  own  :  much  in  Syria 
must  have  been  a  strange  unintelligible  whirlpool  to  him. 
But  the  eyes  of  the  lad  were  open  ;  glimpses  of  many  things 
would  doubtless  be  taken-in,  and  lie  very  enigmatic  as  yet, 
which  were  to  ripen  in  a  strange  way  into  views,  into  beliefs 
and  insights  one  day.  These  journeys  to  Syria  were  probably 
the  beginning  of  much  to  Mohammed. 

One  other  circumstance  we  must  not  forget :  that  he  had 
no  school-learning  ;  of  the  thing  we  call  school-learning  none 
at  all.  The  art  of  writing  was  but  just  introduced  into  Ara- 
bia ;  it  seems  to  Lc  the  true  opinion  that  Mohammed  never 
could  write  !  Life  in  the  desert,  with  its  experiences,  was  all 


THE  J1ERO  AS  PROPHET.  53 

his  education.  "What  of  this  infinite  universe  he,  from  his 
dim  place,  with  his  own  eyes  and  thoughts,  could  take  in,  so 
much  and  no  more  of  it  was  he  to  know.  Curious,  if  we  will 
reflect  on  it,  this  of  having  no  books.  Except  by  what  he 
could  see  for  himself,  or  hear  of  by  uncertain  rumor  of  speech 
in  the  obscure  Arabian  Desert,  he  could  know  nothing.  The 
wisdom  that  had  been  before  him  or  at  a  distance  from  him 
in  the  world,  was  in  a  manner  as  good  as  not  there  for  him. 
Of  the  great  brother  souls,  flame-beacons  through  so  many 
lands  and  times,  no  one  directly  communicates  with  this  great 
soul.  He  is  alone  there,  deep  down  in  the  bosom  of  the  wil- 
derness ;  has  to  grow  up  so, — alone  with  nature  and  his  own 
thoughts. 

But,  from  an  early  age,  he  had  been  remarked  as  a  thought- 
ful man.  His  companions  named  him  "  Al  Almin,  the  faith- 
ful" A  man  of  truth  and  fidelity  ;  true  in  what  he  did,  in 
what  he  spake  and  thought.  They  noted  that  he  always  meant 
something.  A  man  rather  taciturn  in  speech  ;  silent  when 
there  was  nothing  to  be  said  ;  but  pertinent,  wise,  sincere, 
when  he  did  speak  ;  always  throwing  light  on  the  matter. 
This  is  the  only  sort  of  speech  worth  speaking !  Through  life 
we  find  him  to  have  been  regarded  as  an  altogether  solid, 
brotherly,  genuine  man.  A  serious,  sincere  character  ;  yet 
amiable,  cordial,  companionable,  jocose  even  ; — a  good  laugh 
in  him  withal :  there  are  men  whose  laugh  is  as  untrue  as  any- 
thing about  them  ;  who  cannot  laugh.  One  heai-s  of  Moham- 
med's beauty  :  his  fine  sagacious  honest  face,  brown  florid 
complexion,  beaming  black  eyes  : — I  somehow  like  too  that 
vein  on  the  brow,  which  swelled-up  black  when  he  was  in  an- 
ger :  like  the  "horse-shoe  vein "  in  Scott's  " Redgauntlet."  It 
was  a  kind  of  feature  in  the  Hashem  family,  this  black  swell- 
ing vein  in  the  brow  ;  Mohammed  had  it  prominent,  as  would 
appear.  A  spontaneous,  passionate,  yet  just,  true-meaning 
man  !  Full  of  wild  faculty,  fire  and  light ;  of  wild  worth,  all 
uncultured  ;  working  out  his  life-task  in  the  depths  of  the 
desert  there. 

How  he  was  placed  with  Kadijah,  a  rich  widow,  as  her 
steward,  and  traveled  in  her  business,  again  to  the  fairs  of 


54  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

Syria  ;  bow  be  managed  nil,  as  one  can  well  understand,  witb 
fidelity,  adroitness  ;  bow  ber  gratitude,  ber  regard  for  bim 
grew  :  tlie  story  of  tbeir  marriage  is  altogetber  a  graceful  in- 
telligible one,  as  told  us  by  tbe  Arab  autbors.  He  was  twenty- 
five  ;  sbe  forty,  tbougb  still  beautiful.  lie  seems  to  havo 
lived  in  a  most  affectionate,  peaceful,  wbolesome  way  witb 
tbis  wedded  benefactress  ;  loving  ber  truly,  and  ber  alone. 
It  goes  greatly  against  tbe  impostor  theory,  tbe  fact  that  be 
lived  in  tbis  entirely  unexceptionable,  entirely  quiet  and  com- 
monplace way,  till  tbe  beat  of  bis  years  was  done.  He  was 
forty  before  be  talked  of  any  mission  from  heaven.  All  bis 
irregularities,  real  and  supposed,  date  from  after  bis  fiftieth 
year,  when  tbe  good  Kadijah  died.  All  bis  "ambition," 
seemingly,  had  been,  hitherto,  to  live  an  honest  life  ;  his 
"fame,"  tbe  mere  good  opinion  of  neighbors  that  knew  him, 
bad  been  sufficient  hitherto.  Not  till  he  was  already  getting 
old,  the  prurient  heat  of  his  life  all  burnt  out,  and  peace 
growing  to  be  the  chief  thing  this  world  could  give  him,  did 
he  start  on  the  "  career  of  ambition  ; "  and,  belying  all  his 
past  character  and  existence,  set-up  as  a  wretched  empty 
charlatan  to  acquire  what  be  could  now  no  longer  enjoy ! 
For  my  share,  I  have  no  faith  whatever  in  that. 

Ah  no  :  this  deep-hearted  son  of  the  wilderness,  with  his 
beaming  black  eyes  and  open  social  deep  soul,  bad  other 
thoughts  in  him  than  ambition.  A  silent  great  soul ;  he  wag 
one  of  those  who  cannot  but  be  in  earnest ;  whom  nature  her- 
self has  appointed  to  be  sincere.  While  others  walk  in  for- 
mulas and  hearsays,  contented  enough  to  dwell  there,  this 
man  could  not  screen  himself  in  formulas  ;  be  was  alone  witb 
bis  own  soul  and  tbe  reality  of  things.  The  great  mystery  of 
existence,  as  I  said,  glared-in  upon  him,  with  its  terrors,  with 
its  splendors  no  hearsays  could  hide  that  unspeakable  fact, 
"  Here  am  I !  "  Such  sincerity,  as  we  named  it,  has  in  very 
truth  something  of  divine.  The  word  of  such  a  man  is  a  voice 
direct  from  nature's  own  heart.  Men  do  and  must  listen  to 
that  as  to  nothing  else  ; — all  else  is  wind  in  comparison. 
From  of  old,  a  thousand  thoughts,  in  his  pilgrimings  and 
wanderings,  had  been  in  this  man  :  What  am  I  ?  What  is 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  5o 

this  unfathomable  thing  I  live  in,  which  men  name  universe? 
What  is  lif e  ;  what  is  death  ?  "What  am  I  to  believe  ?  "What 
am  I  to  do  ?  The  grim  rocks  of  Mount  Hara,  of  Mount 
Sinai,  the  stern  sandy  solitudes  answered  not.  The  great 
Heaven  i-olling  silent  overhead,  with  its  blue-glancing  stars, 
answered  not.  There  was  no  answer.  The  man's  own  soul, 
and  what  of  God's  inspiration  dwelt  there,  had  to  answer  ! 

It  is  the  thing  which  ah1  men  have  to  ask  themselves ;  which 
we  too  have  to  ask,  and  answer.  This  wild  man  felt  it  to  be 
of  infinite  moment ;  all  other  things  of  no  moment  whatever 
in  comparison.  The  jargon  of  argumentative  Greek  sects, 
vague  traditions  of  Jews,  the  stupid  routine  of  Arab  idolatry' ; 
there  was  no  answer  in  these.  A  hero,  as  I  repeat,  has  this 
first  distinction,  which  indeed  we  may  call  first  and  last,  the 
Alpha  and  Omega  of  his  whole  heroism,  that  he  looks  through 
the  shows  of  things  into  things.  Use  and  wont,  respectable 
hearsay,  respectable  formula :  all  these  are  good,  or  are  not 
good.  There  is  something  behind  and  beyond  all  these, 
which  all  these  must  correspond  with,  be  the  image  of,  or 
they  are — idolatries  ;  "  bits  of  black  wood  pretending  to  be 
God ; "  to  the  earnest  soul  a  mockery  and  abomination. 
Idolatries  never  so  gilded,  waited  on  by  heads  of  the  Koreish, 
will  do  nothing  for  this  man.  Though  all  men  walk  by  them, 
what  good  is  it  ?  The  great  reality  stands  glaring  there  upon 
him.  He  there  has  to  answer  it,  or  perish  miserably.  Now, 
even  now,  or  else  through  all  eternity  never  !  Answer  it ; 
thou  must  find  an  answer. — Ambition?  "What  could  all 
Arabia  do  for  this  man  ;  with  the  crown  of  Greek  Heraclius, 
of  Persian  Chosroes  and  all  crowns  in  the  earth ; — what 
could  they  all  do  for  him  ?  It  was  not  of  the  earth  he  wanted 
to  hear  tell  ;  it  was  of  the  heaven  above  and  of  the  hell  be- 
neath. All  crowns  and  sovereignties  whatsoever,  where  would 
they  in  a  few  brief  years  be  ?  To  be  sheik  of  Mecca  or 
Arabia,  and  have  a  bit  of  gilt  wood  put  into  your  hand, — will 
that  be  one's  salvation  ?  I  decidedly  think,  not  We  will 
leave  it  altogether,  this  impostor  hypothesis,  as  not  credible  ; 
not  veiy  tolerable  even,  worthy  chiefly  of  dismissal  by  us. 

Mohammed  had  been  wont  to  retire  yearly,   during  the 


56  HEROES  AND  IIERO  -  WORSHIP. 

mouth  Ramadhan,  into  solitude  and  silence  ;  as  indeed  was 
the  Arab  custom  ;  a  praiseworthy  custom,  which  such  a  man, 
above  all,  would  find  natural  and  useful.  Communing  with 
his  own  heart,  in  the  silence  of  the  mountains  ;  himself  si- 
lent ;  open  to  the  "  small  still  voices  :  "  it  was  a  right  natural 
custom  !  Mohammed  was  in  his  fortieth  year,  when  having 
withdrawn  to  a  cavern  in  Mount  Hara,  near  Mecca,  during 
this  Ramadhan,  to  pass  the  month  in  prayer,  and  meditation 
on  those  great  questions,  he  one  day  told  his  wife  Kadijah, 
who  with  his  household  was  with  him  or  near  him  this  year, 
that  by  the  unspeakable  special  favor  of  heaven  he  had  now 
found  it  all  out ;  was  in  doubt  and  darkness  no  longer,  but 
saw  it  all.  That  all  these  idols  and  formulas  were  nothing, 
miserable  bits  of  wood  ;  that  there  was  one  God  in  and  over 
all ;  and  we  must  leave  all  idols,  and  look  to  him.  That  God 
is  great ;  and  that  there  is  nothing  else  great !  He  is  the 
reality.  Wooden  idols  are  not  real ;  he  is  real.  He  made  us 
at  first,  sustains  us  yet ;  we  and  all  things  are  but  the  shadow 
of  him ;  a  transitory  garment  veiling  the  eternal  splendor 
"Allah  akbar,  God  is  great;" — and  then  also  "Islam,"  that 
we  must  submit  to  God.  That  our  whole  strength  lies  in  re- 
signed submission  to  him,  whatsoever  he  do  to  us.  For  this 
world,  and  for  the  other  !  The  thing  he  sends  to  us,  were  it 
death  and  worse  than  death,  shah1  be  good,  shall  be  best ;  we 
resign  ourselves  to  God. — "If  this  be  Islam,"  says  Goethe, 
"  do  we  not  all  live  in  Islam  ?  "  Yes,  all  of  us  that  have  any 
moral  life  ;  wo  all  live  so.  It  has  ever  been  held  the  highest 
wisdom  for  a  man  not  merely  to  submit  to  necessity ; — neces- 
sity will  make  him  submit, — but  to  know  and  believe  well 
that  the  stern  thing  which  necessity  had  ordered  was  the 
wisest,  the  best,  the  thing  wanted  there.  To  cease  his  fran- 
tic pretension  of  scanning  this  great  God's-world  in  his  small 
fraction  of  a  brain  ;  to  know  that  it  had  verily,  though  deep 
beyond  his  soundings,  a  just  law,  that  the  soul  of  it  was  good  ; 
— that  his  part  in  it  was  to  conform  to  the  law  of  the  whole, 
and  in  devout  silence  follow  that ;  not  questioning  it,  obey- 
ing it  as  unquestionable. 

I  say,  this  is  yet  the  only  true  morality  known.     A  man  is 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  57 

right  and  invincible,  virtuous  and  on  the  road  towards  sure 
conquest,  precisely  while  he  joins  himself  to  the  great  deep 
law  of  the  world,  in  spite  of  all  superficial  laws,  temporary 
appearances,  profit-and-loss  calculations  ;  he  is  victorious  while 
he  cooperates  with  that  great  central  law,  not  victorious  other- 
wise : — and  surely  his  first  chance  of  cooperating  with  it,  or 
getting  into  the  course  of  it,  is  to  know  with  his  whole  soul 
that  it  is  ;  that  it  is  good,  and  alone  good  !  This  is  the  soul 
of  Islam  ;  it  is  properly  the  soul  of  Christianity  ; — for  Islam 
is  definable  as  a  confused  form  of  Christianity  ;  had  Chris- 
tianity not  been,  neither  had  it  been.  Christianity  also  com- 
mands us,  before  all,  to  be  resigned  to  God.  We  are  to  take 
no  counsel  with  flesh-and-blood  ;  give  ear  to  no  vain  cavils, 
vain  sorrows  and  wishes  ;  to  know  that  we  know  nothing ; 
that  the  worst  and  cruelest  to  our  eyes  is  not  what  it  seems  ; 
that  we  have  to  receive  whatsoever  befalls  us  as  sent  from  God 
above,  and  say,  it  is  good  and  wise,  God  is  great !  "  Though 
he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  him."  Islam  means  in  its  way 
denial  of  self,  annihilation  of  self.  This  is  yet  the  highest 
wisdom  that  heaven  has  revealed  to  our  earth. 

Such  light  had  come,  as  it  could,  to  illuminate  the  darkness 
of  this  wild  Arab  soul.  A  confused  dazzling  splendor  as  of 
life  and  heaven,  in  the  great  darkness  which  threatened  to  be 
death  :  he  called  it  revelation  and  the  angel  Gabriel ; — who  of 
us  yet  can  know  what  to  call  it  ?  It  is  the  "  inspiration  of  the 
Almighty  "  that  giveth  us  understanding.  To  know ;  to  get 
into  the  truth  of  anything,  is  ever  a  mystic  act, — of  which  the 
best  logics  can  but  babble  on  the  surface.  "  Is  not  belief  the 
true  god-announcing  miracle?"  says  Novalis. — That  Moham- 
med's whole  soul,  set  in  flame  with  this  grand  truth  vouch- 
safed him,  should  feel  as  if  it  were  important  and  the  only 
important  thing,  was  very  natural  That  Providence  had  un- 
speakably honored  him  by  revealing  it,  saving  him  from  death 
and  darkness  ;  that  he  therefore  was  bound  to  make  known 
the  same  to  ah1  creatures  :  this  is  what  was  meant  by  "  Mo- 
hammed is  the  prophet  of  God  ; "  this  too  is  not  without  its 
true  meaning. — 

The  good  Kaclijah,  we  can  fancy,  listened  to  him  with  won- 


53  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

der,  with  doubt :  at  length  she  answered  :  Yes,  it  was  true 
this  that  he  said.  One  can  fancy  too  the  boundless  gratitude 
of  Mohammed,  and  how  of  all  the  kindnesses  she  had  done 
him  this  of  believing  the  earnest  struggling  word  he  now 
spoke  was  the  greatest.  "It  is  certain,"  says  Novalis,  "my 
conviction  gains  infinitely,  the  moment  another  soul  will  be- 
lieve in  it."  It  is  a  boundless  favor, --he  never  forgot  his 
good  Kadijah.  Long  afterwards,  Ayesha,  his  young  favorite 
wife,  a  woman  who  indeed  distinguished  herself  among  the 
Moslem,  by  all  manner  of  qualities,  through  her  whole  long 
life;  this  young  brilliant  Ayesha  was,  one  day,  questioning 
him  :  "  Now  am  not  I  better  than  Kadijah  ?  She  was  a  widow  ; 
old,  and  had  lost  her  looks  ;  you  love  me  better  than  you  did 
her  ?  " — "  No,  by  Allah  ! "  answered  Mohammed  :  "  No,  by 
Allah !  She  believed  in  me  when  none  else  would  believe.  In 
the  whole  world  I  had  but  one  friend,  and  she  was  that !  "- 
Seid,  his  slave,  also  believed  in  him  ;  these  with  his  young 
cousin  Ali,  Abu  Thaleb's  son,  were  his  first  converts. 

He  spoke  of  his  doctrine  to  this  man  and  that ;  but  the 
most  treated  it  with  ridicule,  with  indifference  ;  in  three  years, 
I  think,  he  had  gained  but  thirteen  followers.  His  progress 
was  slow  enough.  His  encouragement  to  go  on,  was  al- 
together the  usual  encouragement  that  such  a  man  in  such  a 
case  meets.  After  some  three  years  of  small  success,  he  in- 
vited forty  of  his  chief  kindred  to  an  entertainment ;  and 
there  stood-up  and  told  them  what  his  pretension  was :  that 
he  had  this  thing  to  promulgate  abroad  to  ah1  men ;  that  it 
was  the  highest  thing,  the  one  thing :  which  of  them  would 
second  him  in  that  ?  Amid  the  doubt  and  silence  of  all,  young 
Ah,  as  yet  a  Lid  of  sixteen,  impatient  of  the  silence,  started 
up,  and  exclaimed  in  passionate  fierce  language,  that  he 
would  !  The  assembly,  among  whom  was  Abu  Thaleb,  Ali's 
father,  could  not  be  unfriendly  to  Mohammed  ;  yet  the  sight 
there,  of  one  unlettered  elderly  man,  with  a  lad  of  sixteen, 
deciding  on  such  an  enterprise  against  all  mankind,  appeared 
ridiculous  to  them  ;  the  assembly  broke  up  in  laughter. 
Nevertheless  it  proved  not  a  laughable  thing ;  it  was  a  very 
serious  thing  !  As  for  this  young  Ali,  one  cannot  but  liko 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  59 

him.  A  noble-minded  creature,  as  he  shows  himself,  now  and 
always  afterwards ;  full  of  affection,  of  fiery  daring.  Some- 
thing chivalrous  in  him  ;  brave  as  a  lion  ;  yet  with  a  grace,  a 
truth  and  affection  worthy  of  Christian  knighthood.  He  died 
by  assassination  in  the  mosque  at  Bagdad  ;  a  death  occasioned 
by  his  own  generous  fairness,  confidence  in  the  fairness  of 
others  :  he  said,  if  the  wound  proved  not  unto  death,  they 
must  pardon  the  assassin  ;  but  if  it  did,  then  they  must  slay 
him  straightway,  that  so  they  two  in  the  same  hour  might  ap- 
pear before  God,  and  see  which  side  of  that  quarrel  was  the 
just  one. 

Mohammed  naturally  gave  offence  to  the  Koreish,  keepers 
of  the  Caabah,  superintendents  of  the  idols.  One  or  two  men 
of  influence  had  joined  him  :  the  thing  spread  slowly,  but  it 
was  spreading.  Naturally  he  gave  offence  to  everybody : 
Who  is  this  that  pretends  to  be  wiser  than  we  all ;  that  re- 
bukes us  ah1,  as  mere  fools  and  worshipers  of  wood  !  Abu 
Thaleb,  the  good  uncle,  spoke  with  him  ;  Could  he  not  be  si- 
lent about  all  that ;  believe  it  all  for  himself,  and  not  trouble 
others,  anger  the  chief  men,  endanger  himself  and  them  all, 
talking  of  it  ?  Mohammed  answered  :  If  the  sun  stoqd  on 
his  right  hand  and  the  moon  on  his  left,  ordering  him  to  hold 
his  peace,  he  could  not  obey  !  No  :  there  was  something  in 
this  truth  he  had  got  which  was  of  nature  herself  ;  equal  in 
rank  to  sun,  and  moon,  or  whatsoever  thing  nature  had  made. 
It  would  speak  itself  there,  so  long  as  the  Almighty  allowed 
it,  in  spite  of  sun  and  moon,  and  all  Koreish  and  all  men  and 
things.  It  must  do  that,  and  could  do  no  other.  Mohammed 
answered  so;  and,  they  say,  "burst  into  tears."  Burst  into 
tears  :  he  felt  that  Abu  Thaleb  was  good  to  him  ;  that  the  task 
he  had  got  was  no  soft,  but  a  stern  and  great  one. 

He  went  on  speaking  to  who  would  listen  to  him  ;  publish- 
ing his  doctrine  among  the  pilgrims  as  they  came  to  Mecca  ; 
gaining  adherents  in  this  place  and  that.  Continual  contra- 
diction, hatred,  open  or  secret  danger  attended  him.  His 
powerful  relations  protected  Mohammed  himself ;  but  by  and 
by,  on  his  own  advice,  all  his  adherents  had  to  quit  Mecca, 
and  seek  refuge  in  Abyssinia  over  the  sea.  The  Koreish  grew 


CO  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

ever  angrier  ;  laid  plots,  and  swore  oaths  among  them,  to  put 
Mohammed  to  death  with  their  own  hands.  Abu  Thaleb  was 
dead,  the  good  Kadijah  was  dead.  Mohammed  is  not  solicit- 
ous of  sympathy  from  us ;  but  his  outlook  at  this  time  war; 
one  of  the  dismalest.  He  had  to  hide  in  caverns,  escape  in 
disguise  ;  fly  hither  and  thither  ;  homeless,  in  continual  peril 
of  his  life.  More  than  once  it  seemed  all-over  with  him  ; 
more  than  once  it  turned  on  a  straw,  some  rider's  horse  tak- 
ing fright  or  the  like,  whether  Mohammed  and  his  doctrine 
had  not  ended  there,  and  not  been  heard  of  at  all.  But  it 
was  not  to  end  so. 

In  the  thirteenth  year  of  his  mission,  finding  his  enemies  all 
banded  against  him,  forty  sworn  men,  one  out  of  every  tribe, 
waiting  to  take  his  lif  e,  and  no  continuance  possible  at  Mecca 
for  him  any  longer,  Mohammed  fled  to  the  place  then  called 
Yathreb,  where  he  had  gained  some  adherents  ;  the  place  they 
now  call  Medina,  or  "  Medinat  al  Nabi,  the  City  of  the  Proph- 
et," from  that  circumstance.  It  lay  some  200  miles  off, 
through  rocks  and  deserts ;  not  without  great  difficulty,  in 
such  mood  as  we  may  fancy,  he  escaped  thither,  and  found 
welcome.  The  whole  East  dates  its  era  from  this  flight, 
Heyira  as  they  name  it ;  the  year  1  of  this  hegira  is  G22  of  our 
era,  the  fifty-third  of  Mohammed's  life.  He  was  now  becom- 
ing an  old  man  ;  his  friends  sinking  round  him  one  by  one  ; 
his  path  desolate,  encompassed  with  danger  :  unless  he  could 
find  hope  in  his  own  heart,  the  outward  face  of  things  was 
but  hopeless  for  him.  It  is  so  with  all  men  in  the  like  case. 
Hitherto  Mohammed  had  professed  to  publish  his  religion  by 
the  way  of  preaching  and  persuasion  alone.  But  now,  driven 
foully  out  of  his  native  country,  since  unjust  men  had  not  only 
given  no  ear  to  his  earnest  heaven's-message,  the  deep  cry  of 
his  heart,  but  would  not  even  let  him  live  if  he  kept  speaking 
it, — the  wild  son  of  the  desert  resolved  to  defend  himself,  like 
a  man  and  Arab.  If  the  Koreish  will  have  it  so,  they  shall  have 
it  Tidings,  felt  to  be  of  infinite  moment  to  them  and  all  men, 
they  would  not  listen  to  these  ;  would  trample  them  down  by 
sheer  violence,  steel  and  murder  :  well,  let  steel  try  it,  then  ! 
Ten  years  more  this  Mohammed  had  ;  all  of  fighting,  of 


THE  IIERO  AS  PROPHET,  Cl 

breathless  impetuous  toil  and  struggle  ;  with  what  result  we 
know. 

Much  has  been  said  of  Mohammed's  propagating  his  re- 
ligion by  the  sword.  It  is  no  doubt  far  nobler  what  we  have 
to  boast  of  the  Christian  religion,  that  it  propagated  itself 
peaceably  in  the  way  of  preaching  and  conviction.  Yet  with- 
al, if  we  take  this  for  an  argument  of  the  truth  or  falsehood 
of  a  religion,  there  is  a  radical  mistake  in  it  The  sword  in- 
deed :  but  where  will  you  get  your  sword !  Every  new  opin- 
ion, at  its  starting,  is  precisely  in  a  minority  of  one.  In  one 
man's  head  alone,  there  it  dwells  as  yet.  One  man  alone  of 
the  whole  world  believes  it ;  there  is  one  man  against  all  men. 
That  he  take  a  sword,  and  try  to  propagate  with  that,  will  do 
little  for  him.  You  must  first  get  your  sword !  On  the 
whole,  a  thing  will  propagate  itself  as  it  can.  "We  do  not 
find,  of  the  Christian  religion  either,  that  it  always  disdained 
the  sword,  when  once  it  had  got  one.  Charlemagne's  conver- 
sion of  the  Saxons  was  not  by  preaching.  I  care  little  about 
the  sword  :  I  will  allow  a  thing  to  struggle  for  itself  in  this 
world,  with  any  sword  or  tongue  or  implement  it  has,  or  can 
lay  hold  of.  We  will  let  it  preach,  and  pamphleteer,  and 
fight,  and  to  the  uttermost  bestir  itself,  and  do,  beak  and 
claws,  whatsoever  is  in  it ;  very  sure  that  it  will,  in  the  long- 
run,  conquer  nothing  which  does  not  deserve  to  be  conquered. 
What  is  better  than  itself,  it  cannot  put  away,  but  only  what 
io  worse.  In  this  great  duel,  nature  herself  is  umpire,  and  can 
do  no  wrong :  the  thing  which  is  deepest-rooted  in  nature, 
what  we  call  truest,  that  thing  and  not  the  other  will  be  found 
growing  at  last. 

Here  however,  in  reference  to  much  that  there  is  in  Mo- 
hammed and  his  success,  we  are  to  remember  what  an  umpire 
nature  is  ;  what  a  greatness,  composure  of  depth  and  toler- 
ance there  is  in  her?  You  take  wheat  to  cast  into  the  earth's 
bosom  :  your  wheat  may  be  mixed  with  chaff,  chopped  straw, 
barn-sweepings,  dust,  and  all  imaginable  rubbish  ;  no  matter: 
you  cast  it  into  the  kind,  just  earth  ;  she  grows  the  wheat, — 
the  whole  rubbish  she  silently  absorbs,  shrouds  it  in,  says 
nothing  of  the  rubbish.  The  yellow  wheat  is  growing  there  ; 


C2  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

the  good  earth  is  silent  about  all  the  rest,  —  has  silently 
turned  all  the  rest  to  some  benefit  too,  and  makes  no  com- 
plaint about  it !  So  everywhere  in  nature  !  She  is  true  and 
not  a  He  ;  and  yet  so  great,  and  just,  and  motherly  in  her 
truth.  She  requires  of  a  thing  only  that  it  be  genuine  of 
heart ;  she  will  protect  it  if  so  ;  wiU  not,  if  not  so.  There  is 
a  soul  of  truth  in  all  the  things  she  ever  gave  harbor  to.  Alas, 
is  not  this  the  history  of  all  highest  truth  that  comes  or  ever 
came  into  the  world  ?  The  body  of  them  all  is  imperfection, 
an  element  of  light  in  darkness  :  to  us  they  have  to  come  em- 
bodied in  mere  logic,  in  some  merely  scientific  theorem  of  the 
universe  ;  which  cannot  be  complete  ;  which  cannot  but  be 
found,  one  day,  incomplete,  erroneous,  and  so  die  and  disap- 
pear. The  body  of  all  truth  dies  ;  and  yet  in  all,  I  say,  there 
is  a  soul  which  never  dies  ;  which  in  new  and  ever-nobler  em- 
bodiment lives  immortal  as  man  himself  !  It  is  the  way  with 
nature.  The  genuine  essence  of  truth  never  dies.  That  it  be 
genuine,  a  voice  from  the  great  deep  of  nature,  there  is  the 
point  at  nature's  judgment-seat  "What  we  call  pure  or  impure, 
is  not  with  her  the  final  question.  Not  how  much  chaff  is  in 
you  ;  but  whether  you  have  any  wheat.  Pure  ?  I  might  say 
to  many  a  man  :  Yes,  you  are  pure ;  pure  enough  ;  but  you  are 
chaff, — insincere  hypothesis,  hearsay,  formality ;  you  never 
were  in  contact  with  the  great  heart  of  the  universe  at  all ; 
you  are  properly  neither  pure  nor  impure  :  you  are  nothing, 
nature  has  no  business  with  you. 

Mohammed's  creed  we  called  a  kind  of  Christianity  ;  and 
really,  if  we  look  at  the  wild  rapt  earnestness  with  which  it 
was  believed  and  laid  to  heart,  I  should  say  a  better  kind  than 
that  of  those  miserable  Syrian  sects,  with  their  vain  j anglings 
about  Ilomoiousion  and  Homoousion,  the  head  full  of  worth- 
less noise,  the  heart  empty  and  dead  !  The  truth  of  it  is  em- 
bedded in  portentous  error  and  falsehood ;  but  the  truth  of 
it  makes  it  be  believed,  not  the  falsehood  :  it  succeeded  by  its 
truth.  A  bastard  kind  of  Christianity,  but  a  living  kind  ; 
with  a  heart-life  in  it ;  not  dead,  chopping  barren  logic  mere- 
ly !  Out  of  all  that  rubbish  of  Arab  idolatries,  argumentative 
theologies,  traditions,  subtleties,  rumors  and  hypotheses  of 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  63 

Greeks  and  Jews,  with  their  idle  wiredrawings,  this  wild  man 
of  the  desert,  with  his  wild  sincere  heart,  earnest  as  death  and 
life,  with  his  great  flashing  natural  e}resight,  had  seen  into  the 
kernel  of  the  matter.  Idolatry  is  nothing :  these  wooden  idols 
of  yours,  "  ye  rub  them  with  oil  and  wax,  and  the  flies  stick 
on  them," — these  are  wood,  I  tell  you  !  They  can  do  nothing 
for  you  ;  they  are  an  impotent  blasphemous  pretence  ;  a  hor- 
ror and  abomination,  if  ye  knew  them.  God  alone  is ;  God 
alone  has  power  ;  he  made  us,  he  can  kill  us  and  keep  us  alive  : 
"  Allah  akbar,  God  is  great"  Understand  that  his  will  is  the 
best  for  you  ;  that  howsoever  sore  to  flesh-and-blood,  you  will 
find  it  the  wisest,  best :  you  are  bound  to  take  it  so  ;  in  this 
world  and  in  the  next,  you  have  no  other  thing  that  you  can 
do! 

And  now  if  the  wild  idolatrous  men  did  believe  this,  and 
with  their  fiery  hearts  lay  hold  of  it  to  do  it,  in  what  form  so- 
ever it  came  to  them,  I  say  it  was  well  worthy  of  being  be- 
lieved. In  one  form  or  the  other,  I  say  it  is  still  the  one  thing 
worthy  of  being  believed  by  all  men.  Man  does  hereby  be- 
come the  high-priest  of  this  temple  of  a  world.  He  is  in  har- 
mony with  the  decrees  of  the  author  of  this  world  ;  cooperat- 
ing with  them,  not  vainly  withstanding  them :  I  know,  to 
this  day,  no  better  definition  of  duty  than  that  same.  All 
that  is  right  includes  itself  in  this  of  cooperating  with  the  real 
tendency  of  the  world :  you  succeed  by  this  (the  world's  ten- 
dency will  succeed),  you  are  good,  and  in  the  right  course 
there.  Homoiousion,  Homoousion,  vain  logical  jangle,  then  or 
before  or  at  any  time,  may  jangle  itself  out,  and  go  whither 
and  how  it  likes  :  this  is  the  thing  it  all  struggles  to  mean,  if 
it  would  mean  anything.  If  it  do  not  succeed  in  meaning 
this,  it  means  nothing.  Not  that  abstractions,  logical  propo- 
sitions, be  correctly  worded  or  incorrectly  ;  but  that  living 
concrete  sons  of  Adam  do  lay  this  to  heart  :  that  is  the  impor- 
tant point.  Islam  devoured  all  these  vain  jangling  sects  ;  and 
I  think  had  right  to  do  so.  It  was  a  reality,  direct  from  the 
great  heart  of  nature  once  more.  Ai-ab  idolatries,  Syrian  for- 
mulas, whatsoever  was  not  equally  real,  had  to  go  up  in  flame, 
— mere  dead  fuel,  in  various  senses,  for  this  which  was^/zre. 


Ci  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

It  was  during  these  wild  warfariiigs  and  stragglings,  espe- 
cially after  the  flight  from  Mecca,  that  Mohammed  dictated 
at  intervals  his  sacred  book,  which  they  name  "Koran,"  or 
"Reading,"  "thing  to  be  read."  This  is  the  work  he  and  his 
disciples  made  so  much  of,  asking  all  the  world,  is  not  that  a 
miracle  ?  The  Mohammedans  regard  their  Koran  with  a  rev- 
erence which  few  Christians  pay  even  to  their  Bible.  It  is 
admitted  everywhere  as  the  standard  of  all  law  and  all  prac- 
tice ;  the  thing  to  be  gone  upon  in  speculation  and  life  :  the 
message  sent  direct  out  of  heaven,  which  this  earth  has  to 
conform  to,  and  walk  by  ;  the  thing  to  be  read.  Their  judges 
decide  by  it ;  all  Moslems  are  bound  to  study  it,  seek  in  it  for 
the  light  of  their  lif  e.  They  have  mosques  where  it  is  all  read 
daily ;  thirty  relays  of  priests  take  it  up  in  succession,  get 
through  the  whole  each  day.  There,  for  twelve-hundred  years, 
has  the  voice  of  this  book,  at  all  moments,  kept  sounding 
through  the  ears  and  the  hearts  of  so  many  men.  We  hear 
of  Mohammedan  doctors  that  had  read  it  seventy  thousand 
times. 

Very  curious  :  if  one  sought  for  "  discrepancies  of  national 
taste,"  here  surely  were  the  most  eminent  instance  of  that ! 
We  also  can  read  the  Koran  ;  our  translation  of  it,  by  Sale,  is 
known  to  be  a  very  fair  one.  I  must  say,  it  is  as  toilsome 
reading  as  I  ever  undertook.  A  wearisome  confused  jumble, 
crude,  incondite ;  endless  iterations,  long-windedness,  entan- 
glement ;  most  crude,  incondite  : — insupportable  stupidity, 
in  short !  Nothing  but  a  sense  of  duty  could  carry  any  Euro- 
pean thruogh  the  Koran.  We  read  in  it,  as  we  might  in  the 
State-Paper  Office,  unreadable  masses  of  lumber,  that  perhaps 
we  may  get  some  glimpses  of  a  remarkable  man.  It  is  true 
we  have  it  under  disadvantages  :  the  Arabs  see  more  method 
in  it  than  we.  Mohammed's  followers  found  the  Koran  lying 
all  in  fractions,  as  it  had  been  written-down  at  first  promul- 
gation ;  much  of  it,  they  say,  on  shoulder-blades  of  mutton, 
flung  pell-mell  into  a  chest ;  and  they  published  it,  without 
any  discoverable  order  as  to  time  or  otherwise  ; — merely  try- 
ing, as  would  seem,  and  this  not  very  strictly,  to  put  the  long- 
est chapters  first.  The  real  beginning  of  it,  in  that  way,  lies 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  65 

almost  at  the  end  :  for  the  earliest  portions  were  the  shortest. 
Read  in  its  historical  sequence,  it  perhaps  would  not  be  so 
bad.  Much  of  it,  too,  they  say,  is  rhythmic  ;  a  kind  of  wild 
chanting  song,  in  the  original.  This  may  be  a  great  point ; 
much  perhaps  has  been  lost  in  the  translation  here.  Yet  with 
every  allowance,  one  feels  it  difficult  to  see  how  any  mortal 
ever  could  consider  this  Koran  as  a  book  written  in  heaven, 
too  good  for  the  earth  ;  as  a  well-written  book,  or  indeed  as  a 
book  at  all ;  and  not  a  bewildered  rhapsody ;  uritten,  so  far  as 
writing  goes,  as  badly  as  almost  any  book  ever  was !  So  much 
for  national  discrepancies,  and  the  standard  of  taste. 

Yet  I  should  say,  it  was  not  unintelligible  how  the  Arabs 
might  so  love  it.  "\Yhen  once  you  get  this  confused  coil  of  a 
Koran  fairly  off  your  hands,  and  have  it  behind  you  at  a  dis- 
tance, the  essential  type  of  it  begins  to  disclose  itself  ;  and  in 
this  there  is  a  merit  quite  other  than  the  literary  one.  If  a 
book  come  from  the  heart,  it  will  contrive  to  reach  other 
hearts  ;  all  art  and  authorcraft  are  of  small  amount  to  that. 
One  would  say  the  primary  character  of  the  Koran  is  this  of  its 
genuineness,  of  its  being  a  bona-fide  book.  Prideaux,  I  know, 
and  others  have  represented  it  as  a  mere  bundle  of  juggleries  ; 
chapter  after  chapter  got-up  to  excuse  and  varnish  the  author's 
successive  sins,  forward  his  ambitions  and  quackeries  :  but 
really  it  is  time  to  dismiss  all  that.  I  do  not  assert  Moham- 
med's continual  sincerity  :  who  is  continually  sincere  ?  But 
I  confess  I  can  make  nothing  of  the  critic,  in  these  times,  who 
would  accuse  him  of  deceit  prepense  ;  of  conscious  deceit  gen- 
erally, or  perhaps  at  all ; — still  more,  of  living  in  a  mere  ele- 
ment of  conscious  deceit,  and  writing  this  Koran  as  a  forger 
and  juggler  would  have  done !  Every  candid  eye,  I  think, 
will  read  the  Koran  far  otherwise  than  so.  It  is  the  confused 
ferment  of  a  great  rude  human  soul ;  rude,  untutored,  that 
cannot  even  read  ;  but  fervent,  earnest,  struggling  vehemently 
to  utter  itself  in  words.  With  a  kind  of  breathless  intensity 
he  strives  to  utter  himself ;  the  thoughts  crowd  on  him  pellr 
mell ;  for  very  multitude  of  things  to  say,  he  can  get  nothing 
said.  The  meaning  that  is  in  him  shapes  itself  into  no  form 
of  composition,  is  stated  in  no  sequence,  method  or  coherence  ; 
ft 


66  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

— they  are  not  shaped  at  all,  these  thoughts  of  his  ;  flung-out 
unshaped,  as  they  struggle  and  tumble  there,  in  their  chaotic 
inarticulate  state.  We  said  "  stupid  : "  yet  natural  stupidity 
is  by  no  means  the  character  of  Mohammed's  book  ;  it  is  nat- 
ural uncultivation  rather.  The  man  has  not  studied  speaking  ; 
in  the  haste  and  pressure  of  continual  fighting  has  not  time 
to  mature  himself  into  fit  speech.  The  panting,  breathless 
haste  and  vehemence  of  a  man  struggling  in  the  thick  of  bat- 
tle for  life  and  salvation  ;  this  is  the  mood  he  is  in  !  A  head- 
long haste  ;  for  very  magnitude  of  meaning,  he  cannot  get 
himself  articulated  into  words.  The  successive  utterances  of 
a  soul  in  that  mood,  colored  by  the  various  vicissitudes  of 
three-and-twenty  years ;  now  well  uttered,  now  worse  ;  this 
is  the  Koran. 

For  we  are  to  consider  Mohammed,  through  these  three-and- 
twenty  years,  as  the  centre  of  a  world  wholly  in  conflict.  Bat- 
tles with  the  Koreish  and  heathen,  quarrels  among  his  own 
people,  backslidings  of  his  own  wild  heart ;  all  this  kept  him 
in  a  perpetual  whirl,  his  soul  knowing  rest  no  more.  In  wake- 
ful nights,  as  one  may  fancy  the  wild  soul  of  the  man,  tossing 
amid  these  vortices,  would  hail  any  light  of  a  decision  for  them 
as  a  veritable  light  from  heaven  ;  any  making  up  of  his  mind, 
so  blessed,  indispensable  for  him  there,  would  seem  the  in- 
spiration of  a  Gabriel.  Forger  and  juggler  ?  No,  no  !  This 
great  fiery  heart,  seething,  simmering  like  a  great  furnace  of 
thoughts,  Was  not  a  juggler's.  His  life  was  a  fact  to  him  ; 
this  God's  universe  an  awful  fact  and  reality.  He  has  faults 
enough.  This  man  was  an  uncultured  semi-barbarous  son  of 
nature,  much  of  the  Bedouin  still  clinging  to  him  :  we  must 
take  him  for  that.  But  for  a  wretched  simulacrum,  a  hungry 
impostor  without  eyes  or  heart,  practising  for  a  mess  of  pot- 
tage such  blasphemous  swiudlery,  forgery  of  celestial  docu- 
ments, continual  high-treason  against  his  Maker  and  self,  we 
will  not  and  cannot  take  him. 

Sincerity,  in  all  senses,  seems  to  me  the  merit  of  the  Koran  ; 
what  had  rendered  it  precious  to  the  wild  Arab  men.  It  is, 
after  all,  the  first  and  last  merit  in  a  book  ;  gives  rise  to 
merits  of  all  kinds, — nay,  at  bottom,  it  alone  can  give  rise  to 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  C7 

merit  of  any  kind.  Curiously,  through  these  incondite  masses 
of  tradition,  vituperation,  complaint,  ejaculation  in  the  Koran, 
a  vein  of  true  direct  insight,  of  what  we  might  almost  call 
poetry,  is  found  straggling.  The  body  of  the  book  is  made  up 
of  mere  tradition,  and  as  it  were,  vehement  enthusiastic  extem- 
pore preaching.  He  returns  forever  to  the  old  stories  of  the 
prophets  as  they  went  current  in  the  Arab  memory :  how 
prophet  after  prophet,  the  prophet  Abraham,  the  prophet 
Hud,  the  prophet  Moses,  Christian,  and  other  real  and  fabu- 
lous prophets,  had  come  to  this  tribe  and  to  that,  warning 
men  of  their  sin  ;  and  then  received  by  them  even  as  he  Mo- 
hammed was, — which  is  a  great  solace  to  him.  These  things 
he  repeats  ten,  perhaps  twenty  times  ;  again  and  over  again, 
with  wearisome  iteration  ;  has  never  done  repeating  them.  A 
brave  Samuel  Johnson,  in  his  forlorn  garret,  might  con-over 
the  biographies  of  authors  in  that  way.  This  is  the  great 
staple  of  the  Koran.  But  curiously,  through  all  this,  comes 
ever  and  anon  some  glance  as  of  the  real  thinker  and  seer. 
He  has  actually  an  eye  for  the  world,  this  Mohammed  :  with 
a  certain  directness  and  rugged  vigor,  he  brings  home  still,  to 
our  heart,  the  thing  his  own  heart  has  been  opened  to.  I 
make  but  little  of  his  praises  of  Allah,  which  many  praise  ; 
they  are  borrowed,  I  suppose,  mainly  from  the  Hebrew,  at  least 
they  are  far  surpassed  there.  But  the  eye  that  flashes  direct 
into  the  heart  of  things,  and  sees  the  truth  of  them  ;  this  is 
to  me  a  highly  interesting  object.  Great  nature's  own  gift ; 
which  she  bestows  on  all ;  but  which  only  one  in  the  thousand 
does  not  cast  sorrowfully  away.  It  is  what  I  call  sincerity  of 
vision  ;  the  test  of  a  sincere  heart. 

Mohammed  can  work  no  miracles  ;  he  often  answers  im- 
patiently :  I  can  work  no  miracles.  I?  "I  am  a  public 
preacher  ;  "  appointed  to  preach  this  doctrine  to  all  creatures. 
Yet  the  world,  as  we  can  see,  had  really  from  of  old  been  all 
one  great  miracle  to  him.  Look  over  the  world,  says  he  ;  is 
it  not  wonderful,  the  work  of  Allah  ;  wholly  "a  sign  to  you," 
if  your  eyes  were  open  !  This  earth,  God  made  it  for  you  ; 
"  appointed  paths4u  it ;"  you  can  live  in  it,  go  to  and  fro  on 
it. — The  clouds  in  the  dry  country  of  Arabia,  to  Mohammed 


C8  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

they  are  very  wonderful :  Great  clouds,  be  says,  born  in  tbe 
deep  bosom  of  tbe  upper  immensity,  where  do  they  come 
from !  They  hang  there,  the  great  black  monsters ;  pour- 
down  their  rain-deluges  "  to  revive  a  dead  earth,"  and  grass 
springs,  and  "tall  leafy  palm-trees  with  their  date- clusters 
banging  round.  Is  not  that  a  sign?"  Your  cattle  too, — 
Allah  made  them  ;  serviceable  dumb  creatures  ;  they  change 
the  grass  into  milk  ;  you  have  your  clothing  from  them,  very 
strange  creatures  ;  they  come  ranking  home  at  evening  time, 
"and,"  adds  he,  "and  are  a  credit  to  you!"  Ships  also, — 
he  talks  often  about  ships :  huge  moving  mountains,  they 
spread-out  their  cloth  wings,  go  bounding  through  the  water 
there,  heaven's  wind  driving  them  ;  anon  they  lie  motionless, 
God  has  withdrawn  the  wind,  they  lie  dead,  and  cannot  stir  ! 
Miracles  ?  cries  he  ;  what  miracles  would  you  have  ?  Are  not 
you  yourselves  there?  God  made  you,  "shaped  you  out  of  a 
little  clay."  Ye  were  small  once ;  a  few  years  ago  ye  were  not 
at  ah1.  Ye  have  beauty,  strength,  thoughts,  "ye  have  com- 
passion on  one  another."  Old  age  comes-on  you,  and  gray 
hairs  ;  your  strength  fades  into  feebleness  ;  ye  sink  down, 
and  again  are  not.  "Ye  have  compassion  on  one  another  :  " 
this  struck  me  much  :  Allah  might  have  made  you  having  no 
compassion  on  one  another, — how  had  it  been  then  !  This  is 
a  great  direct  thought,  a  glance  at  first-hand  into  the  very 
fact  of  things.  Eude  vestiges  of  poetic  genius,  of  whatsoever 
is  best  and  truest,  ure  visible  in  this  man.  A  strong  un- 
tutored intellect ;  eyesight,  heart ;  a  strong  wild  man, — 
might  have  shaped  himself  into  poet,  king,  priest,  any  kind  of 
hero. 

To  his  eyes  it  is  forever  clear  that  this  world  wholly  is 
miraculous.  He  sees  what,  as  we  said  once  before,  all  great 
thinkers,  the  rude  Scandinavians  themselves,  in  one  way  or 
other,  have  contrived  to  see :  that  this  so  solid-looking  ma- 
terial world  is,  at  bottom,  in  very  deed,  nothing ;  is  a  visual 
and  tactual  manifestation  of  God's  power  and  presence, — a 
shadow  hung  out  by  him  on  the  bosom  of  the  void  infinite  ; 
nothing  more.  The  mountains,  he  says,  Jiiese  great  rock- 
mountains,  they  shall  dissipate  themselves  "  like  clouds  ; " 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  69 

melt  into  the  blue  as  clouds  do,  and  not  be !  He  figures  the 
earth,  in  the  Arab  fashion  ;  Sale  tells  us,  as  an  immense  plain 
or  flat  plate  of  ground,  the  mountains  are  set  on  that  to  steady 
it.  At  the  last  day  they  shall  disappear  "like  clouds;"  the 
whole  earth  shall  go  spinning,  whirl  itself  off  into  wreck,  and 
as  dust  and  vapor  vanish  in  the  inane :  Allah  withdraws  his 
hand  from  it,  and  it  ceases  to  be.  The  universal  empire  of 
Allah,  presence  everywhere  of  an  unspeakable  power,  a 
splendor,  and  a  terror  not  to  be  named,  as  the  true  force, 
essence  and  reality,  in  all  things  whatsoever,  was  continually 
clear  to  this  man.  What  a  modern  talks-of  by  the  name, 
forces  of  nature,  laws  of  nature  ;  and  does  not  figure  as 
a  divine  thing ;  not  even  as  one  thing  at  all,  but  as  a  set  of 
things,  undivine  enough, — saleable,  curious,  good  for  propel- 
ling steam-ships !  With  our  sciences  and  cyclopaedias,  we  are 
apt  to  forget  the  divineness,  in  those  laboratories  of  ours. 
We  ought  not  to  forget  it !  That  once  well  forgotten,  I  know 
not  what  else  were  worth  remembering.  Most  sciences,  I 
think,  were  then  a  very  dead  thing  ;  withered,  contemptuous, 
empty  ; — a  thistle  in  late  autumn.  The  best  science,  without 
this,  is  but  as  the  dead  limber  ;  it  is  not  the  growing  tree  and 
forest, — which  gives  ever-new  timber,  among  other  things  ! 
Man  cannot  know  either,  unless  he  can  worship  in  some  way. 
His  knowledge  is  a  pedantry,  and  dead  thistle,  otherwise. 

Much  has  been  said  and  written  about  the  sensuality  of 
Mohammed's  religion  ;  more  than  was  just.  The  indulgences, 
criminal  to  us,  which  he  permitted,  were  not  of  his  appoint- 
ment ;  he  found  them  practiced,  unquestioned  from  imme- 
morial time  in  Arabia,  what  he  did  was  to  curtail  them,  re- 
strict them,  not  on  one  but  on  many  sides.  His  religion  is 
not  an  easy  one,  with  rigorous  fasts,  lavations,  strict  complex 
formulas,  prayers  five  times  a  day  ;  and  abstinence  from  wine, 
it  did  not  "  succeed  by  being  an  easy  religion."  As  if  indeed 
any  religion,  or  cause  holding  of  religion,  could  succeed  by 
that !  It  is  is  a  calumny  on  men  to  say  that  they  are  roused  to 
heroic  action  by  ease,  hope  of  pleasure,  recompense, — sugar- 
plums of  any  kind,  in  this  world  or  the  next !  In  the  meanest 
mortal  there  lies  something  nobler.  The  poor  swearing 


70  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

soldier,  hired  to  be  shot,  has  his  "honor  of  a  soldier,"  dif- 
ferent from  drill-regulations  and  the  shilling  a  day.  It  is  not 
to  taste  sweet  things,  but  to  do  noble  and  true  things,  and 
vindicate  himself  under  God's  heaven  as  a  God-made  man, 
that  the  poorest  son  of  Adam  dimly  longs.  Show  him  the 
way  of  doing  that,  the  dullest  daydruclge  kindles  into  a  hero. 
They  wrong  man  greatly  who  say  he  is  to  be  seduced  by  ease. 
Difficulty,  abnegation,  martyrdom,  death  are  the  allurements 
that  act  on  the  heart  of  man.  Kindle  the  inner  genial  life 
of  him,  you  have  a  flame  that  burns-up  all  lower  considera- 
tions. Not  happiness,  but  something  higher :  one  sees  this 
even  in  the  frivolous  classes,  with  their  "point  of  honor" 
and  the  like.  Not  by  flattering  our  appetites  ;  no,  by  awaken- 
ing the  heroic  that  slumbers  in  every  heart,  can  any  religion 
gain  followers. 

Mohammed  himself,  after  all  that  can  be  said  about  him, 
was  not  a  sensual  man.  We  shall  err  widely  if  we  consider 
this  man  as  a  common  voluptuary,  intent  mainly  on  base  en- 
joyments,— nay  on  enjoyments  of  any  kind.  His  household 
was  of  the  frugalest  ;  his  common  diet  barley-bread  and 
water :  sometimes  for  months  there  was  not  a  fire  once 
lighted  on  his  hearth.  They  record  with  just  pride  that  he 
would  mend  his  own  shoes,  patch  his  own  cloak.  A  poor, 
hard-toiling,  ill-provided  man  ;  careless  of  what  vulgar  men 
toil  for.  Not  a  bad  man,  I  should  say  ;  something  better  in 
him  than  hunger  of  any  sort, — or  these  wild  Arab  men,  fight- 
ing and  jostling  three-and-twenty  years  at  his  hand,  in  close 
contact  with  him  always,  would  not  have  reverenced  him  so  ! 
They  were  wild  men,  bursting  ever  and  anon  into  quarrel, 
into  all  kinds  of  fierce  sincerity  ;  without  right  worth  and 
manhood,  no  man  could  have  commanded  them.  They  called 
him  prophet,  you  say?  Why,  he  stood  there  face  to  face 
with  them  ;  bare,  not  enshrined  in  any  mystery  ;  visibly  clout- 
ing his  own  cloak,  cobbling  his  own  shoes  ;  fighting,  counsel- 
ling, ordering  in  the  midst  of  them  :  they  must  have  seen 
what  kind  of  a  man  he  ivas,  let  him  be  called  what  yoit  like  ! 
No  emperor  with  his  tiaras  was  obeyed  as  this  man  in  a  cloak 
of  his  own  clouting.  During  three-and-twenty  years  of  rough 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPI1ET.  71 

actual  trial.  I  find  something  of  a  veritable  hero  necessary 
for  that,  of  itself. 

His  last  words  are  a  prayer  ;  broken  ejaculations  of  a  heart 
struggling-up,  in  trembling  hope,  towards  its  Maker.  We 
cannot  say  that  his  religion  made  him  worse  ;  it  made  him 
better;  good,  not  bad.  Generous  things  are  recorded  of 
him  :  when  he  lost  his  daughter,  the  thing  he  answers  is, 
in  his  own  dialect,  everywhere  sincere,  and  yet  equivalent  to 
that  of  Christians,  "  the  Lord  giveth,  and  the  Lord  taketh 
away ;  blessed  be  the  name  of  the  Lord."  He  answered  in 
like  manner  of  Seid,  his  emancipated  well-beloved  slave,  the 
second  of  the  believers.  Seid  had  fallen  in  the  war  of  Tabilc, 
the  first  of  Mohammed's  fightings  with  the  Greeks.  Moham- 
med said,  it  was  well ;  Seid  had  done  his  Master's  work,  Seid 
had  now  gone  to  his  Master  :  it  was  all  weh1  with  Seid.  Yet 
Seid's  daughter  found  him  weeping  over  the  body  ; — the  old 
gray-haired  man  melting  in  tears  !  "  What  do  I  see  ?  "  said 
she.  "  You  see  a  friend  weeping  over  his  friend."  He  went 
out  for  the  last  time  into  the  mosque,  two  days  before  his 
death ;  asked,  if  he  had  injured  any  man  ?  Let  his  own  back 
bear  the  stripes.  If  he  owed  any  man  ?  A  voice  answered, 
"Yes,  me  three  drachms,"  borrowed  on  such  an  occasion. 
Mohammed  ordered  them  to  be  paid :  "  Better  be  in  shame 
now,"  said  he,  "than  at  the  day  of  judgment."  You  remem- 
ber Kadijah,  and  the  "  no,  by  Allah  !  "  Traits  of  that  kind 
show  us  the  genuine  man,  the  brother  of  us  all,  brought  visi- 
ble through  twelve  centuries, — the  veritable  son  of  our 
common  mother. 

Withal  I  like  Mohammed  for  his  total  freedom  from  cant. 
He  is  a  rough  self-helping  son  of  the  wilderness  ;  does  not 
pretend  to  be  what  he  is  not.  There  is  no  ostentatious  pride 
in  him  ;  but  neither  does  he  go  much  upon  humility  :  he  is 
there  as  he  can  be,  in  cloak  and  shoes  of  his  own  clouting  ; 
speaks  plainly  to  all  manner  of  Persian  kings,  Greek  emper- 
ors, what  it  is  they  are  bound  to  do ;  knows  well  enough, 
about  himself  "the  respect  due  unto  thee."  In  a  life-and- 
death  war  with  Bedouins,  cruel  things  could  not  fail ;  but 
neither  are  acts  of  mercy,  of  noble  natural  pity  and  generosity 


72  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

wanting.  Mohammed  makes  no  apology  for  the  one,  no 
boast  of  the  other.  They  were  each  the  free  dictate  of  his 
heart ;  each  called-for,  there  and  then.  Not  a  mealy-mouthed 
man  !  A  candid  ferocity,  if  the  case  call  for  it,  is  in  him  ;  he 
does  not  mince  matters  !  The  war  of  Tabftc  is  a  thing  he 
often  speaks  of ;  his  men  refused,  many  of  them,  to  march  011 
that  occasion  ;  pleaded  the  heat  of  the  weather,  the  harvest, 
and  so  forth  ;  he  can  never  forget  that.  Your  harvest  ?  It 
lasts  for  a  day.  What  will  become  of  your  harvest  through 
all  eternity  ?  Hot  weather  ?  Yes,  it  was  hot ;  "  but  hell  will 
be  hotter  !  "  Sometimes  a  rough  sarcasm  turns-up  :  He  says 

o  j.  «/ 

to  the  unbelievers,  ye  shall  have  the  just  measure  of  your 
deeds  at  that  great  day.  They  will  be  weighed-out  to  you  ; 
ye  shall  not  have  short  weight ! — Everywhere  he  fixes  the 
matter  in  his  eye  ;  he  sees  it :  his  heart,  now  and  then,  is  as  if 
struck  dumb  by  the  greatness  of  it.  "  Assuredly,"  he  says  : 
that  word,  in  the  Koran,  is  written-down  sometimes  as  a  sen- 
tence by  itself  :  "Assuredly." 

No  dilettantism  in  this  Mohammed  ;  it  is  a  business  of  rep- 
robation and  salvation  with  him,  of  time  and  eternity  :  he  is 
in  deadly  earnest  about  it !  Dilettantism,  hypothesis,  specu- 
lation, a  kind  of  amateur-search  for  truth,  toying  and  coquet- 
ting with  truth  :  this  is  the  sorest  sin.  The  root  of  all  other 
imaginable  sins.  It  consists  in  the  heart  and  soul  of  the 
man  never  having  been  open  to  truth; — "living  in  a  vain 
show."  Such  a  man  not  only  utters  and  produces  falsehoods, 
but  is  himself  a  falsehood.  The  rational  moral  principle, 
spark  of  the  divinity,  is  sunk  deep  in  him,  in  quiet  paralysis 
of  life-death.  The  very  falsehoods  of  Mohammed  are  truer 
than  the  truths  of  such  a  man.  He  is  the  insincere  man  : 
smooth-polished,  respectable  in  some  times  and  places ;  inof- 
fensive, says  nothing  harsh  to  anybody ;  most  cleanly, — just 
as  carbonic  acid  is,  which  is  death  and  poison. 

We  will  not  praise  Mohammed's  moral  precepts  as  always 
of  the  superfinest  sort ;  yet  it  can  be  said  that  there  is  always 
a  tendency  to  good  in  them  ;  that  they  are  the  true  dictates  of 
a  heart  aiming  towards  what  is  just  and  true.  The  sublime 
forgiveness  of  Christianity,  turning  of  the  other  cheek  when 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET,  73 

the  one  has  been  smitten,  is  not  here  :  you  are  to  revenge 
yourself,  but  it  is  to  be  in  measure,  not  overmuch,  or  beyond 
justice.  On  the  other  hand,  Islam,  like  any  great  faith,  and 
insight  into  the  essence  of  man,  is  a  perfect  equalizer  of  men  : 
the  soul  of  one  believer  outweighs  all  earthly  kingships ;  all 
men,  according  to  Islam,  too,  are  equal.  Mohammed  insists 
not  on  the  propriety  of  giving  alms,  but  on  the  necessity  of 
it :  he  marks-do  wn  by  law  how  much  you  are  to  give,  and  it 
is  at  your  peril  if  you  neglect.  The  tenth  part  of  a  man's  an- 
nual income,  whatever  that  may  be,  is  the  property  of  the 
poor,  of  those  that  are  afflicted  and  need  help.  Good,  all 
this  :  the  natural  voice  of  humanity,  of  pity  and  equity  dwell- 
ing in  the  heart  of  this  wild  son  of  nature  speaks  so. 

Mohammed's  paradise  is  sensual,  his  hell  sensual :  true  ;  in 
the  one  and  the  other  there  is  enough  that  shocks  all  spiritual 
feeling  in  us.  But  we  are  to  recollect  that  the  Arabs  already 
had  it  so ;  that  Mohammed,  in  whatever  he  changed  of  it, 
softened  and  diminished  all  this.  The  worst  sensualities,  too, 
are  the  work  of  doctors,  followers  of  his,  not  his  work.  In 
the  Koran  there  is  really  very  little  said  about  the  joys  of  par- 
adise ;  they  are  intimated  rather  than  insisted  on.  Nor  is  it 
forgotten  that  the  highest  joys  even  there  shall  be  spiritual  ; 
the  pure  presence  of  the  highest,  this  shall  infinitely  transcend 
all  other  joys.  He  says,  "Your  salutation  shall  be,  peace." 
Salam,  have  peace  ! — the  thing  that  all  rational  souls  long  for, 
and  seek,  vainly  here  below,  as  the  one  blessing.  "  Ye  shall 
sit  on  seats,  facing  one  another  :  all  grudges  shall  be  taken 
away  out  of  your  hearts."  All  grudges !  Ye  shall  love  one 
another  freely  ;  for  each  of  you,  in  the  eyes  of  his  brothers, 
there  will  be  heaven  enough  ! 

In  reference  to  this  of  the  sensual  paradise  and  Moham- 
med's sensuality,  the  sorest  chapter  of  all  for  us,  there  were 
many  things  to  be  said  ;  which  it  is  not  convenient  td  enter 
upon  here.  Two  remarks  only  I  shall  make,  and  therewith 
leave  it  to  your  candor.  The  first  is  furnished  me  by  Goethe  ; 
it  is  a  casual  hint  of  his  which  seems  well  worth  taking  note 
of.  In  one  of  his  delineations,  in  "  Meister's  Travels "  it  is, 
the  hero  comes-upon  a  society  of  men  with  very  strange  ways, 


74  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP, 

one  of  which  was  this  :  "  We  require,"  says  the  master,  "  that 
each  of  our  people  shall  restrict  himself  in  one  direction," 
shall  go  right  against  his  desire  in  one  matter,  and  make  him' 
self  do  the  thing  he  does  not  wish,  "  should  we  allow  him  the 
greater  latitude  on  all  other  sides."  There  seems  to  me  a 
great  justness  in  this.  Enjoying  things  which  are  pleasant ; 
that  is  not  the  evil :  it  is  the  reducing  of  our  moral  self  to 
slavery  by  them  that  is.  Let  a  man  assert  withal  that  he  is 
king  over  his  habitudes  ;  that  he  could  and  would  shake  them 
off,  on  cause  shown :  this  is  an  excellent  law.  The  mouth 
Ramadhan  for  the  Moslem,  much  in  Mohammed's  religion, 
much  in  his  own  life,  bears  in  that  direction  ;  if  not  by  fore- 
thought, or  clear  purpose  of  moral  improvement  on  his  part, 
then  by  a  certain  healthy  manful  instinct,  which  is  as  good. 

But  there  is  another  thing  to  be  said  about  the  Mohamme- 
dan heaven  and  hell.  This  namely,  that,  however  gross  and 
material  they  may  be,  they  are  an  emblem  of  an  everlasting 
truth,  not  always  so  well  remembered  elsewhere.  That  gross 
sensual  paradise  of  his  ;  that  horrible  flaming  hell ;  the  great 
enormous  day  of  judgment  he  perpetually  insists  on  :  what  is 
all  this  but  a  rude  shadow,  in  the  rude  Bedouin  imagination, 
of  that  grand  spiritual  fact,  and  beginning  of  facts,  which  it  is 
ill  for  us  too  if  we  do  not  all  know  and  feel :  the  infinite  nat- 
ure of  duty?  That  man's  actions  here  are  of  infinite  moment 
to  him,  and  never  die  or  end  at  all ;  that  man,  with  his  little 
life  reaches  upwards  high  as  heaven,  downwards  low  as  hell, 
and  in  his  threescore  years  of  time  holds  an  eternity  fearfully 
and  wonderfully  hidden  :  all  this  had  burnt  itself,  as  in  flame- 
characters,  into  the  wild  Arab  soul.  As  in  flame  and  light- 
ning, it  stands  written  there  ;  awful,  unspeakable,  ever  pres- 
ent to  him.  "With  bursting  earnestness,  with  a  fierce  savage 
sincerity,  half-articulating,  not  able  to  articulate,  he  strives  to 
speak  it,  bodies  it  forth  in  that  heaven  and  that  hell.  Bodied 
forth  in  what  way  you  will,  it  is  the  first  of  all  truths.  It  is 
venerable  under  all  embodiments.  What  is  the  chief  end  of 
man  here  below  ?  Mohammed  has  answered  this  question,  in 
a  way  that  might  put  some  of  us  to  shame  !  He  does  not,  like 
a  Bentham,  a  Paley,  take  right  and  wrong,  and  calculate  the 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  75 

profit  and  loss,  ultimate  pleasure  of  the  one  and  of  tlie  other ; 
and  summing  all  up  by  addition  and  subtraction  into  a  net 
result,  ask  you,  whether  on  the  whole  the  right  does  not  pre- 
ponderate considerably  ?  No  ;  it  is  not  better  to  do  the  one 
than  the  other  ;  the  one  is  to  the  other  as  life  is  to  death, — as 
heaven  is  to  helL  The  one  must  in  nowise  be  done,  the  other 
in  nowise  left  undone.  You  shall  not  measure  them  ;  they 
are  incommensurable  :  the  one  is  death  eternal  to  a  man,  the 
other  is  life  eternal.  Benthamee  utility,  virtue  by  profit  and 
loss  ;  reducing  this  God's-world  to  a  dead  brute  steam-engine, 
the  infinite  celestial  soul  of  man  to  a  kind  of  hay-balance  for 
weighing  hay  and  thistles  on,  pleasures  and  pains  on  : — if  you 
ask  me  which  gives,  Mohammed  or  they,  the  beggarlier  and 
falser  view  of  man  and  his  destinies  in  this  universe,  I  will 

answer,  it  is  not  Mohammed ! 

On  the  whole,  we  will  repeat  that  this  religion  of  Moham- 
med's is  a  kind  of  Christianity  ;  has  a  genuine  element  of  what 
is  spiritually  highest  looking  through  it,  not  to  be  hidden  by 
all  its  imperfections.  The  Scandinavian  god  Wish,  the  god  of 
all  rude  men, — this  has  been  enlarged  into  a  heaven  by  Mo- 
hammed ;  but  a  heaven  symbolical  of  sacred  duty,  and  to  be 
earned  by  faith  and  welldoing,  by  valiant  action,  and  a  divine 
patience  which  is  still  more  valiant.  It  is  Scandinavian  pagan- 
ism, and  a  truly  celestial  element  superadded  to  that.  Call  it 
not  false  ;  look  not  at  the  falsehood  of  it,  look  at  the  truth  of 
it.  For  these  twelve  centuries,  it  has  been  the  religion  and 
life-guidance  of  the  fifth  part  of  the  whole  kindred  of  man- 
kind. Above  all  things,  it  has  been  a  religion  heartily  believed. 
These  Arabs  believe  their  religion,  and  tiy  to  live  by  it !  No 
Christians,  since  the  early  ages,  or  only  perhaps  the  English 
Puritans  in  modern  times,  have  ever  stood  by  their  faith  as 
the  Moslem  do  by  theirs, — believing  it  wholly,  fronting  time 
with  it,  and  eternity  with  it.  This  night  the  watchman  on  the 
streets  of  Cairo  when  he  cries,  "  Who  goes  ?  "  will  hear  from 
the  passenger,  along  with  his  answer,  "  There  is  no  God  but 
God."  Allah  akbar,  Islam,  sounds  through  the  souls,  and 
whole  daily  existence,  of  these  dusky  millions.  Zealous  mis- 
sionaries preach  it  abroad  among  Malays,  black  Papuans, 


76  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

brutal  idolaters ; — displacing  what  is  worse,  nothing  that  is 
better  or  good. 

To  the  Arab  nation  it  was  as  a  birth  from  darkness  into 
light ;  Arabia  first  became  alive  by  means  of  it.  A  poor  shep- 
herd people,  roaming  unnoticed  in  its  deserts  since  the  crea- 
tion of  the  world  :  a  hero-prophet  was  sent  down  to  them 
with  a  word  they  could  believe  ;  see,  the  unnoticed  becomes 
world-notable,  the  small  has  grown  world-great ;  within  one 
century  afterwards,  Arabia  is  at  Grenada  on  this  hand,  at 
Delhi  on  that ; — glancing  in  valor  and  splendor  and  the  light 
of  genius,  Arabia  shines  through  long  ages  over  a  great  sec- 
tion of  the  world.  Belief  is  great,  life-giving.  The  history 
of  a  nation  becomes  fruitful,  soul-elevating,  great,  so  soon  as 
it  believes.  These  Arabs,  the  man  Mohammed,  and  that  one 
century, — is  it  not  as  if  a  spark  had  fallen,  one  spark,  on  a 
world  of  what  seemed  black  unnoticeable  sand  ;  but  lo,  the 
sand  proves  explosive  powder,  blazes  heaven  high  from  Delhi 
to  Grenada !  I  said,  the  great  man  was  always  as  lightning 
out  of  heaven  ;  the  rest  of  men  waited  for  him  like  fuel,  and 
then  they  too  would  flame. 


LECTURE  HI. 

THE  HEKO   AS   POET.       TAHTE  :    SHAKESPEABE. 
[Tuesday,  12th  May,  1840.] 

The  hero  as  divinity,  the  hero  as  prophet,  are  productions 
of  old  ages  ;  not  to  be  repeated  in  the  new.  They  presup- 
pose a  certain  rudeness  of  conception,  which  the  progress  of 
mere  scientific  knowledge  puts  an  end  to.  There  needs  to  be, 
as  it  were,  a  world  vacant,  or  almost  vacant  of  scientific  forms, 
if  men  in  their  loving  wonder  are  to  fancy  their  fellow-man 
either  a  god  or  one  speaking  with  the  voice  of  a  god.  Di- 
vinity and  prophet  are  past.  We  are  now  to  see  our  hero  in 
the  less  ambitious,  but  also  less  questionable,  character  of 
poet ;  a  character  which  does  not  pass.  The  poet  is  a  heroic 
figure  belonging  to  all  ages  ;  whom  all  ages  possess,  when 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  77 

ouce  lie  is  produced,  whom  the  newest  age  as  the  oldest  may 
produce  ; — and  will  produce,  always  when  nature  pleases. 
Let  nature  send  a  hero-soul  ;  in  no  age  is  it  other  than  possi- 
ble that  he  may  be  shaped  into  a  poet. 

Hero,  prophet,  poet, — many  different  names,  in  different 
times  and  places,  do  we  give  to  great  men  ;  according  to  va- 
rieties we  note  in  them,  according  to  the  sphere  in  which  they 
have  displayed  themselves  !  We  might  give  many  more 
names,  on  this  same  principle.  I  will  remark  again,  however, 
as  a  fact  not  unimportant  to  be  understood,  that  the  different 
sphere  constitutes  the  grand  origin  of  such  distinction  ;  that 
the  hero  can  be  poet,  prophet,  king,  priest  or  what  you  will, 
according  to  the  kind  of  world  he  finds  himself  born  into. 
I  confess,  I  have  no  notion  of  a  truly  great  man  that  could 
not  be  all  sorts  of  men.  The  poet  who  could  merely  sit  on  a 
chair,  and  compose  stanzas,  would  never  make  a  stanza  worth 
much.  He  could  not  sing  the  heroic  warrior,  unless  he  him- 
self were  at  least  a  heroic  warrior  too.  I  fancy  there  is  in 
him  the  politician,  the  thinker,  legislator,  philosopher ; — in 
one  or  the  other  degree,  he  could  have  been,  he  is  all  these. 
So  too  I  cannot  understand  how  a  Mirabeau,  with  that  great 
glowing  heart,  with  the  fire  that  was  in  it,  with  the  bursting 
tears  that  were  in  it,  could  not  have  written  verses,  tragedies, 
poems,  and  touched  all  hearts  in  that  way,  had  his  course  of 
life  and  education  led  him  thitherward.  The  grand  funda- 
mental character  is  that  of  great  man  ;  that  the  man  be  great 
Napoleon  has  words  in  him  which  are  like  Austerlitz  battlea 
Louis  Fourteenth's  marshals  are  a  kind  of  poetical  men  withal ; 
the  things  Turenne  says  are  full  of  sagacity  and  geniality,  like 
sayings  of  Samuel  Johnson.  The  great  heart,  the  clear  deep- 
seeing  eye  :  there  it  lies  ;  no  man  whatever,  in  what  province 
soever,  can  prosper  at  all  without  these.  Petrarch  and  Boc- 
caccio did  diplomatic  messages,  it  seems,  quite  well :  one  can 
easily  believe  it ;  they  had  done  things  a  little  harder  than 
these  !  Burns,  a  gifted  song-writer,  might  have  made  a  still 
better  Mirabeau.  Shakespeare, — one  knows  not  what  he 
could  not  have  made,  in  the  supreme  degree. 

True,  there  are  aptitudes  of  nature  too.     Nature  does  not 


78  HEEOES  AND  HERO-WORSIIIP. 

make  all  great  men,  more  than  all  other  men,  in  the  self-same 
mould.  Varieties  of  aptitude  doubtless  ;  but  infinitely  more 
of  circumstance  ;  and  far  oftenest  it  is  the  latter  only  that  are 
looked  to.  But  it  is  as  with  common  men  in  the  learning  of 
trades.  You  take  any  man,  as  yet  a  vague  capability  of  a 
man,  who  could  be  any  kind  of  craftsman  ;  and  make  him 
into  a  smith,  a  carpenter,  a  mason :  he  is  then  and  thence- 
forth that  and  nothing  else.  And  if,  as  Addison  complains, 
you  sometimes  see  a  street-porter  staggering  under  his  load 
on  spindle-shanks,  and  near  at  hand  a  tailor  with  the  frame 
of  a  Samson  handling  a  bit  of  cloth  and  small  Whitechapel 
needle, — it  cannot  be  considered  that  aptitude  of  nature  alone 
has  been  consulted  here  either ! — The  great  man  also,  to  what 
shall  he  be  bound  apprentice  ?  Given  your  hero,  is  he  to  be- 
come conqueror,  king,  philosopher,  poet  ?  It  is  an  inexplica- 
bly complex  controversial- calculation  between  the  world  and 
him  !  He  will  read  the  world  and  its  laws  ;  the  world  with 
its  laws  will  be  there  to  be  read.  What  the  world,  on  this 
matter,  shall  permit  and  bid  is,  as  we  said,  the  most  impor- 
tant fact  about  the  world.  — 

Poet  and  prophet  differ  greatly  in  our  loose  modem  notions 
of  them.  In  some  old  languages,  again,  the  titles  are  synony- 
mous ;  Fates  means  both  prophet  and  poet :  and  indeed  at  all 
times,  prophet  and  poet,  well  understood,  have  much  kindred 
of  meaning.  Fundamentally  indeed  they  are  the  same ;  in 
this  most  important  respect  especially,  that  they  have  pene- 
trated both  of  them  into  the  sacred  mystery  of  the  universe ; 
what  Goethe  calls  "the  open  secret."  " Which  is  the  great 
secret?"  asks  one. — "The  open  secret," — open  to  all,  seen  by 
almost  none  !  That  divine  mystery,  which  lies  everywhere 
in  all  beings,  "  the  divine  idea  of  the  world,  that  which  lies 
at  the  bottom  of  appearance,"  as  Fichte  styles  it ;  of  which 
all  appearance,  from  the  starry  sky  to  the  grass  of  the  field, 
but  especially  the  appearance  of  man  and  his  work,  is  but  the 
vesture,  the  embodiment  that  renders  it  visible.  This  divine 
mystery  is  in  all  times  and  in  all  places ;  veritably  is.  In 
most  times  and  places  it  is  greatly  overlooked  ;  and  the  uni- 


THE  I1ERO  AS  POET.  79 

verse,  definable  always  in  one  or  the  other  dialect,  as  the  real- 
ized thought  of  God,  is  considered  a  trivial,  inert,  common- 
place matter, — as  if,  says  the  satirist,  it  were  a  dead  thing, 
which  some  upholsterer  had  put  together.  It  could  do  no 
good,  at  present,  to  speak  much  about  this  ;  but  it  is  a  pity 
for  every  one  of  us  if  we  do  not  know  it,  live  ever  in  the 
knowledge  of  it.  Really  a  most  mournful  pity  ; — a  failure  to 
live  at  all,  if  we  live  otherwise ! 

But  now,  I  say,  whoever  may  forget  this  divine  mystery, 
the  Fates,  whether  prophet  or  poet,  has  penetrated  into  it ; 
is  a  man  sent  hither  to  make  it  more  impressively  known  to 
us.  That  always  is  his  message  ;  he  is  to  reveal  that  to  us, — 
that  sacred  mystery  which  he  more  than  others  lives  ever 
present  with.  While  others  forget  it,  he  knows  it ; — I  might 
say,  he  has  been  driven  to  know  it  ;  without  consent  asked  of 
him,  he  finds  himself  living  in  it,  bound  to  live  in  it.  Once 
more,  here  is  no  hearsay,  but  a  direct  insight  and  belief;  this 
man  too  could  not  help  being  a  sincere  man  !  Whosoever 
may  live  in  the  shows  of  things,  it  is  for  him  a  necessity  of 
nature  to  live  in  the  very  fact  of  things.  A  man  once  more, 
in  earnest  with  the  universe,  though  all  others  were  but  toy- 
ing with  it.  He  is  a  Fates,  first  of  all,  in  virtue  of  being  sin- 
cere. So  far  poet  and  prophet,  participators  in  the  "  open 
secret,"  are  one. 

With  respect  to  their  distinction  again  :  the  Fates  prophet, 
we  may  say,  has  seized  that  sacred  nnrstery  rather  on  the 
moral  side,  as  good  and  evil,  duty  and  prohibition  ;  the  Fates 
poet  on  what  the  Germans  call  the  aesthetic  side,  as  beautiful, 
and  the  like.  The  one  we  may  call  a  revealer  of  what  we  are 
to  do,  the  other  of  what  we  are  to  love.  But  indeed  these 
two  provinces  run  into  one  another,  and  cannot  be  disjoined. 
The  prophet  too  has  his  eye  on  what  we  are  to  love  :  how  else 
shall  he  know  what  it  is  we  are  to  do  ?  The  highest  voice 
ever  heard  on  this  earth  said  withal,  "Consider  the  lilies  of 
the  field  :  they  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin  :  yet  Solomon  in 
all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these."  A  glance, 
that,  into  the  deepest  deep  of  beauty.  "  The  lilies  of  the 
field," — dressed  finer  than  earthly  princes,  spriuging-up  there 


SO  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

in  the  humble  furrow-field ;  a  beautiful  eye  looking-out  on 
you,  from  the  great  inner  sea  of  beauty  !  How  could  the 
rude  earth  make  these,  if  her  essence,  rugged  as  she  looks 
and  is,  were  not  inwardly  beauty  ?  In  this  point  of  view,  too, 
a  saying  of  Goethe's,  which  has  staggered  several,  may  have 
meaning:  " The  beautiful,"  he  intimates,  " is  higher  than  the 
good ;  the  beautiful  includes  in  it  the  good."  The  true  beau- 
tiful ;  which  however,  I  have  said  somewhere,  "  differs  from 
the  false  as  heaven  does  from  Vauxhall !  "  So  much  for  the 
distinction  and  identity  of  poet  and  prophet. — 

In  ancient  and  also  in  modern  periods  we  find  a  few  poets 
who  are  accounted  perfect ;  whom  it  were  a  kind  of  treason 
to  find  fault  with.  This  is  noteworthy  ;  this  is  right :  yet  in 
strictness  it  is  only  an  illusion.  At  bottom,  clearly  enough, 
there  is  no  perfect  poet !  A  vein  of  poetry  exists  in  the  hearts 
of  all  men  ;  no  man  is  made  altogether  of  poetry.  We  are  all 
poets  when  we  read  a  poem  well.  The  "  imagination  that 
shudders  at  the  Hell  of  Dante,"  is  not  that  the  same  faculty, 
weaker  in  degree,  as  Dante's  own  ?  No  one  but  Shakespeare 
can  embody  out  of  Saxo  Grammaticus,  the  story  of  "  Hamlet " 
as  Shakespeare  did  :  but  every  one  models  some  kind  of  story 
out  of  it ;  every  one  embodies  it  better  or  worse.  We  need 
not  spend  time  in  defining.  Where  there  is  no  specific  differ- 
ence, as  between  round  and  square,  all  definition  must  be 
more  or  less  arbitrary.  A  man  that  has  so  much  more  of  the 
poetic  element  developed  in  him  as  to  become  noticeable,  will 
be  called  poet  by  his  neighbors.  World-poets  too,  those 
whom  we  are  to  take  for  perfect  poets,  are  settled  by  critics 
in  the  same  way.  One  who  rises  so  far  above  the  general 
level  of  poets  will,  to  such  and  such  critics,  seem  a  universal 
poet ;  as  he  ought  to  do.  And  yet  it  is,  and  must  be,  an  ar- 
bitrary distinction.  All  poets,  all  men,  have  some  touches  of 
the  universal ;  no  man  is  wholly  made  of  that.  Most  poets 
are  very  soon  forgotten :  but  not  the  noblest  Shakespeare  or 
Homer  of  them  can  be  remembered  forever ; — a  day  comes 
when  he  too  is  not ! 

Nevertheless,  you  will  say,  there  must  be  a  difference  be- 
tween true  poetry  and  true  speech  not  poetical :  what  is  the 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  81 

difference?  On  this  point  many  tilings  have  been  written, 
especially  by  late  German  critics,  some  of  which  are  not  very 
intelligible  at  first.  They  say,  for  example,  that  the  poet  has 
an  infinitude  in  him  ;  communicates  an  unendlichkeit,  a  cer- 
tain character  of  "  infinitude,"  to  whatsoever  he  delineates. 
This,  though  not  very  precise,  yet  on  so  vague  a  matter  is 
worth  remembering  :  if  weh1  meditated,  some  meaning  will 
gradually  be  found  in  it.  For  my  own  part,  I  find  consider- 
able meaning  in  the  old  vulgar  distinction  of  poetry  being 
metrical,  having  music  in  it,  being  a  song.  Truly,  if  pressed 
to  give  a  definition,  one  might  say  this  as  soon  as  anything 
else  :  If  your  delineation  be  authentically  musical,  musical 
not  in  word  only,  but  in  heart  and  substance,  in  all  the 
thoughts  and  utterances  of  it,  in  the  whole  conception  of  it, 
then  it  will  be  poetical ;  if  not,  not, — Musical :  how  much  lies 
in  that !  A  musical  thought  is  one  spoken  by  a  mind  that 
has  penetrated  into  the  inmost  heart  of  the  thing ;  detected 
the  inmost  mystery  of  it,  namely  the  melody  that  h'es  hidden 
in  it ;  the  inward  harmony  of  coherence,  which  is  its  soul, 
whereby  it  exists,  and  has  a  right  to  be,  here  in  this  world. 
All  inmost  things,  we  may  say,  are  melodious  ;  naturally  utter 
themselves  in  song.  The  meaning  of  song  goes  deep.  Who 
is  there  that,  in  logical  words,  can  express  the  effect  music 
has  on  us  ?  A  kind  of  inarticulate  unfathomable  speech, 
which  leads  us  to  the  edge  of  the  infinite,  and  lets  us  for  mo- 
ments gaze  into  that ! 

Nay  all  speech,  even  the  commonest  speech,  has  something 
of  song  in  it :  not  a  parish  in  the  world  but  has  its  parish  ac- 
cent ; — the  rhythm  or  tune  to  which  the  people  there  sing 
what  they  have  to  say !  Accent  is  a  kind  of  chanting  ;  all 
men  have  accent  of  their  own, — though  they  only  notice  that 
of  others.  Observe  too  how  all  passionate  language  does  of 
itself  become  musical, — with  a  finer  music  than  the  mere  ac- 
cent ;  the  speech  of  a  man  even  in  zealous  anger  becomes  a 
chant,  a  song.  All  deep  things  are  song.  It  seems  somehow 
the  very  central  essence  of  us,  song  ;  as  if  all  the  rest  were 
but  wrappages  and  hulls !  The  primal  element  of  us  ;  of  us, 
and  of  all  things.  The  Greeks  fabled  of  sphere-harmonies  ; 
6 


82  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

it  was  the  feeling  they  had  of  the  inner  structure  of  nature  ; 
that  the  soul  of  all  her  voices  and  utterances  were  perfect 
music.  Poetry,  therefore,  we  will  call  musical  thought.  The 
poet  is  he  who  thinks  in  that  manner.  At  bottom,  it  turns 
still  on  power  of  intellect ;  it  is  a  man's  sincerity  and  depth 
of  vision  that  makes  him  a  poet.  See  deep  enough,  and  you 
see  musically  ;  the  heart  of  nature  being  everywhere  music,  if 
you  can  only  reach  it. 

The  Vales  poet,  with  his  melodious  apocalypse  of  nature, 
seems  to  hold  a  poor  rank  among  us,  in  comparison  with  the 
Votes  prophet ;  his  function,  and  our  esteem  of  him  for  his 
function,  alike  slight.  The  hero  taken  as  divinity  ;  the  hero 
taken  as  prophet ;  then  next  the  hero  taken  only  as  poet : 
does  it  not  look  as  if  our  estimate  of  the  great  man,  epoch 
after  epoch,  were  continually  diminishing  ?  We  take  him 
first  for  a  god,  then  for  one  god-inspired  ;  and  now  in  the 
next  stage  of  it,  his  most  miraculous  word  gains  from  us  only 
the  recognition  that  he  is  a  poet,  beautiful  verse-maker,  man 
of  genius,  or  suchlike ! — It  looks  so  ;  but  I  persuade  myself 
that  intrinsically  it  is  not  so.  If  we  consider  well,  it  will  per- 
haps appear  that  in  man  there  is  the  same  altogether  peculiar 
admiration  for  the  heroic  gift,  by  what  name  soever  called, 
that  there  at  any  time  was. 

I  should  say,  if  we  do  not  reckon  a  great  man  literally  di- 
vine, it  is  that  our  notions  of  God,  of  the  supreme  unattain- 
able fountain  of  splendor,  wisdom  and  heroism,  are  ever 
rising  higher;  not  altogether  that  our  reverence  for  these 
qualities,  as  manifested  in  our  like,  is  getting  lower.  This  is 
worth  taking  thought  of.  Skeptical  dilettantism,  the  curse 
of  these  ages,  a  curse  which  will  not  last  forever,  does  indeed 
in  this  the  highest  province  of  human  things,  as  in  ah1 
provinces,  make  sad  work  ;  and  our  reverence  for  great  men, 
all  crippled,  blinded,  paralytic  as  it  is,  comes  out  in  poor 
plight,  hardly  recognizable.  Men  worship  the  shows  of  great 
men  ;  the  most  disbelieve  that  there  is  any  reality  of  great 
men  to  worship.  The  dreariest,  fatalest  faith  ;  believing 
which,  one  would  literally  despair  of  human  things.  Never- 
theless look,  for  example,  at  Napoleon !  A  Corsican  lieuten- 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  S3 

ant  of  artillery ;  that  is  the  show  of  him :  yet  is  he  not  obeyed, 
worshiped  after  his  sort,  as  all  the  tiaraed  and  diademed  of 
the  world  put  together  could  not  be  ?  High  duchesses,  and 
ostlers  of  inns,  gather  round  the  Scottish  rustic,  Burns  ; — a 
strange  feeling  dwelling  in  each  that  they  never  heard  a  man 
like  this  ;  that,  on  the  whole,  this  is  the  man  !  In  the  secret 
heart  of  these  people  it  still  dimly  reveals  itself,  though  there 
is  no  accredited  way  of  uttering  it  at  present,  that  this  rustic, 
with  his  black  brows  and  flashing  sun-eyes,  and  strange 
words  moving  laughter  and  tears,  is  of  a  dignity  far  beyond 
all  others,  incommensurable  with  all  others.  Do  not  we  feel 
it  so  ?  But  now,  were  dilettantism,  skepticism,  triviali ty,  and 
all  that  sorrowful  brood,  cast-out  of  us, — as,  by  God's  bless- 
ing, they  shall  one  day  be  ;  were  faith  in  the  shows  of  things 
entirely  swept-out,  replaced  by  clear  faith  in  the  things,  so 
that  a  man  acted  on  the  impulse  of  that  only,  and  counted 
the  other  non-extant,  what  a  new  livelier  feeling  towards  this 
Bums  were  it ! 

Nay  here  in  these  ages,  such  as  they  are,  have  we  not  two 
mere  poets,  if  not  deified,  yet  we  may  say  beautified  ?  Shakes- 
peare and  Dante  are  saints  of  poetry  ;  really,  if  we  will  think 
of  it,  canonized,  so  that  it  is  impiety  to  meddle  with  them.  The 
unguided  instinct  of  the  world,  working  across  all  these  per- 
verse impediments,  has  arrived  at  such  result.  Dante  and 
Shakespeare  are  a  peculiar  two.  They  dwell  apart,  in  a  kind 
of  royal  solitude  ;  none  equal,  none  second  to  them  ;  in  the 
general  feeling  of  the  world,  a  certain  transcendentalism,  a 
glory  as  of  complete  perfection,  invests  these  two.  They  are 
canonized,  though  no  pope  or  cardinal  took  hand  in  doing  it ! 
Such,  in  spite  of  every  perverting  influence,  in  the  most  un- 
heroic  times,  is  still  our  indestructible  reverence  for  heroism. 
—We  will  look  a  little  at  these  two,  the  poet  Dante  and  the 
poet  Shakespeare  :  what  little  it  is  permitted  us  to  say  here  of 
the  hero  as  poet  will  most  fitly  arrange  itself  in  that  fashion. 

Many  volumes  have  been  written  by  way  of  commentary  on 
Dante  and  his  book  ;  yet,  on  the  whole,  with  no  great  result. 
His  biography  is,  as  it  were,  irrecoverably  lost  for  us.  An 


84  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

unimportant,  wandering,  sorrowstricken  man,  not  much  note 
was  taken  of  him  while  he  lived ;  and  the  most  of  that  has 
vanished,  in  the  long  space  that  now  intervenes.  It  is  five 
centuries  since  he  ceased  writing  and  living  here.  After  all 
commentaries,  the  book  itself  is  mainly  what  we  know  of  him. 
The  book  ; — and  one  might  add  that  portrait  commonly  at- 
tributed to  Giotto,  which,  looking  on  it,  you  cannot  help  in- 
clining to  think  genuine,  whoever  did  it.  To  me  it  is  a  most 
touching  face  ;  perhaps  of  a'l  faces  that  I  know,  the  most  so. 
Lonely  there,  painted  as  on  vacancy,  with  the  simple  Laurel 
wound  round  it ;  the  deathless  sorrow  and  pain,  the  known 
victory  which  is  also  deathless  ; — significant  of  the  whole  his- 
tory of  Dante  !  I  think  it  is  the  rnournfulest  face  that  ever 
was  painted  from  reality  ;  an  altogether  tragic,  heart-affecting 
face.  There  is  in  it,  as  foundation  of  it,  the  softness,  tender- 
ness, gentle  affection  as  of  a  child  ;  but  all  this  is  as  if  con- 
gealed into  sharp  contradiction,  into  abnegation,  isolation, 
proud  hopeless  pain.  A  soft  ethereal  soul  looking-out  so 
stern,  implacable,  grim-trenchant,  as  from  imprisonment  of 
thick-ribbed  ice  !  "VVithal  it  is  a  silent  pain  too,  a  silent  scorn- 
ful one  :  the  lip  is  curled  in  a  kind  of  godlike  disdain  of  the 
thing  that  is  eating-out  his  heart, — as  if  it  were  withal  a  mean 
insignificant  thing,  as  if  he  whom  it  had  power  to  torture  and 
strangle  were  greater  than  it.  The  face  of  one  wholly  in  pro- 
test, and  life-long  unsurrendering  battle,  against  the  world. 
Affection  aU  converted  into  indignation  :  an  implacable  indig- 
nation ;  slow,  equable,  silent,  like  that  of  a  god  !  The  eye  too, 
it  looks-out  as  in  a  kind  of  suiprixe,  a  kind  of  inquiry,  why 
the  world  was  of  such  a  sort  ?  This  is  Dante :  so  he  looks, 
this  "voice  of  ten  silent  centuries,"  and  sings  us  "his  mystic 
unfathomable  song." 

The  little  that  we  know  of  Dante's  life  corresponds  well 
enough  with  this  portrait  and  this  book.  He  was  born  at 
Florence,  in  the  upper  class  of  society,  in  the  year  12G5.  His 
education  was  the  best  then  going  ;  much  school-divinity, 
Aristotelean  logic,  some  Latin  classics, — no  inconsiderable  in- 
sight into  certain  provinces  of  things  :  and  Dante,  with  his 
earnest  intelligent  nature,  we  need  not  doubt,  learned  better 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  85 

than  most  all  that  was  learuable.  He  has  a  clear  cultivated 
understanding,  and  of  great  subtlety  ;  this  best  fruit  of  edu- 
cation he  had  contrived  to  realize  from  these  scholastics. 
He  knows  accurately  and  well  what  lies  close  to  him  ;  but,  in 
such  a  time,  without  printed  books  or  free  intercourse,  he 
could  not  know  well  what  was  distant :  the  small  clear  light, 
most  luminous  for  what  is  near,  breaks  itself  into  singular 
chiaroscuro  striking  on  what  is  far  off.  This  was  Dante's 
learning  from  the  schools.  In  life,  he  had  gone  through  the 
usual  destinies  ;  been  twice  out  campaigning  as  a  soldier  for 
the  Florentine  state,  been  on  embassy  ;  had  in  his  thirty-fifth 
year,  by  natural  gradation  of  talent  and  service,  become  one 
of  the  chief  magistrates  of  Florence.  He  had  met  in  boyhood 
a  certain  Beatrice  Portinari,  a  beautiful  little  girl  of  his  own 
age  and  rank,  and  grown  up  thenceforth  in  partial  sight  of 
her,  in  some  distant  intercourse  with  her.  All  readers  know 
his  graceful  affecting  account  of  this  ;  and  then  of  their  being 
parted  ;  of  her  being  wedded  to  another,  and  of  her  death 
soon  after.  She  makes  a  great  figure  io  Dante's  poem  ;  seems 
to  have  made  a  great  figure  in  his  life.  Of  all  beings  it  might 
seem  as  if  she,  held  apart  from  Mm,  far  apart  at  last  in  the 
dim  eternity,  were  the  only  one  he  had  ever  with  his  whole 
strength  of  affection  loved.  She  died.  Dante  himself  was 
wedded  ;  but  it  seems  not  happily,  far  from  happily.  I  fancy, 
the  rigorous  earnest  man,  with  his  keen  excitabilities,  was  not 
altogether  easy  to  make  happy. 

We  will  not  complain  of  Dante's  miseries :  had  all  gone 
right  with  him  as  he  wished  it,  he  might  have  been  Prior, 
Podestu,  or  whatsoever  they  call  it,  of  Florence,  well  accepted 
among  neighbors, — and  the  world  had  wanted  one  of  the  most 
notable  words  ever  spoken  or  sung.  Florence  would  have  had 
another  prosperous  Lord  Mayor  ;  and  the  ten  dumb  centuries 
continued  voiceless,  and  the  ten  other  listening  centuries 
(for  there  will  be  ten  of  them  and  more)  had  no  "  Divina  Corn- 
media  "  to  hear !  We  will  complain  of  nothing.  A  nobler 
destiny  was  appointed  for  this  Dante  ;  and  he,  struggling  like 
a  man  led  towards  death  and  crucifixion,  could  not  help  ful- 
filling it.  Give  him  the  choice  of  his  happiness !  He  knew 


S6  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

not,  more  than  we  do,  what  was  really  happy,  what  was  really 
miserable. 

In  Dante's  priorship,  the  Guelf-Ghibelline,  Bianchi-Neri,  or 
some  other  confused  disturbances  rose  to  such  a  height,  that 
Dante,  whose  party  had  seemed  the  stronger,  was  with  his 
friends  cast  unexpectedly  forth  into  banishment  ;  doomed 
thenceforth  to  a  life  of  woe  and  wandering.  His  property 
was  all  confiscated  and  more  ;  he  had  the  fiercest  feeling  that 
it  was  entirely  unjust,  nefarious  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man. 
He  tried  what  was  in  him  to  get  reinstated  ;  tried  even  by 
warlike  surprisal,  with  arms  in  his  hand :  but  it  would  not 
do ;  bad  only  had  become  worse.  There  is  a  record,  I  believe, 
still  extant,  in  the  Florence  Archives,  dooming  this  Dante, 
wheresoever  caught,  to  be  burnt  alive.  Burnt  alive ;  so  it 
stands,  they  say :  a  very  curious  civic  document.  Another 
curious  document,  some  considerable  number  of  years  later, 
is  a  letter  of  Dante's  to  the  Florentine  magistrates,  written  in 
answer  to  a  milder  proposal  of  theirs,  that  he  should  return 
on  condition  of  apologizing  and  paying  a  fine.  He  answers, 
with  fixed  stern  pride:  "If  I  cannot  return  without  calling 
myself  guilty,  I  will  never  return,  nunquam  reverlar." 

For  Dante  there  was  now  no  home  in  this  world.  He  wan- 
dered from  patron  to  patron,  from  place  to  place,  proving,  in 
his  own  bitter  words,  "  How  hard  is  the  path,  Come  e  duro 
calle."  The  wretched  are  not  cheerful  company.  Dante,  poor 
and  banished,  with  his  proud  earnest  nature,  with  his  moody 
humors,  was  not  a  man  to  conciliate  men.  Petrarch  reports 
of  him  that  being  at  Can  della  Scala's  court,  and  blamed  one 
day  for  his  gloom  and  taciturnity,  he  answered  in  no  courtier- 
like  way.  Della  Scala  stood  among  his  courtiers,  with  mimes 
and  buffoons  (nebulones  ac  hislriones)  making  him  heartily 
merry ;  when  turning  to  Dante,  he  said  :  "  Is  it  not  strange, 
now,  that  this  poor  fool  should  make  himself  so  entertaining ; 
while  you,  a  wise  man,  sit  there  day  after  day,  and  have 
nothing  to  amuse  us  with  at  all  ?  "  Dante  answered  bitterly  : 
"  No,  not  strange  ;  your  highness  is  to  recollect  the  proverb, 
like  to  like  ; " — given  the  amuser,  the  amusee  must  also  be 
given !  Such  a  man,  with  his  proud  silent  ways,  with  his 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  87 

sarcasms  and  sorrows,  was  not  made  to  succeed  at  court.  By 
degrees,  it  came  to  be  evident  to  him  that  he  had  no  longer 
any  resting-place,  or  hope  of  benefit,  in  this  earth.  The 
earthly  world  had  cast  him  forth,  to  wander,  wander  ;  no  liv- 
ing heart  to  love  him  now ;  for  his  sore  miseries  there  was  no 
solace  here. 

The  deeper  naturally  would  the  eternal  world  impress  itself 
on  him  ;  that  awful  reality  over  which,  after  all,  this  time- 
world,  with  its  Florences  and  banishments,  only  flutters  as  an 
unreal  shadow.  Florence  thou  shalt  never  see  ;  but  hell  and 
purgatory  and  heaven  thou  shalt  surely  see  !  What  is  Florence, 
Can  della  Scala,  and  the  world  and  life  altogether !  ETERNITY  : 
thither,  of  a  truth,  not  elsewhither,  art  thou  and  all  things 
bound  !  The  great  soul  of  Dante,  homeless  on  earth,  made 
its  home  more  and  more  in  that  awful  other  world.  Natu- 
rally his  thoughts  brooded  on  that,  as  on  the  one  fact  impor- 
tant for  him.  Bodied  or  bodiless,  it  is  the  one  fact  important 
for  all  men  : — but  to  Dante,  in  that  age,  it  was  bodied  in  fixed 
certainty  of  scientific  shape  ;  he  no  more  doubted  of  that 
Halebolge  pool,  that  it  all  lay  there  with  its  gloomy  circles, 
with  its  alti  guai,  and  that  he  himself  should  see  it,  than  we 
doubt  that  we  should  see  Constantinople  if  we  went  thither. 
Dante's  heart,  long  filled  with  this,  brooding  over  it  in  speech- 
less thought  and  awe,  bursts  forth  at  length  into  "  mystic  un- 
fathomable song  ;"  and  this  his  "Divine  Comedy,"  the  most 
remarkable  of  all  modern  books,  is  the  result. 

It  must  have  been  a  great  solacenaent  to  Dante,  and  was,  as 
we  can  see,  a  proud  thought  for  him  at  times.  That  he,  here 
in  exile,  could  do  this  work  ;  that  no  Florence,  nor  no  man  or 
men,  could  hinder  him  from  doing  it,  or  even  much  help  him 
in  doing  it.  He  knew  too,  partly,  that  it  was  great ;  the 
greatest  a  man  could  do.  "  If  thou  follow  thy  star,  Se  tu  segui 
tna  stella" — so  could  the  hero,  in  his  forsakenness,  in  his  ex- 
treme need,  still  say  to  himself:  "Follow  thou  thy  star,  thou 
shalt  not  fail  of  a  glorious  haven  ! "  The  labor  of  writing, 
we  find,  and  indeed  could  know  otherwise,  was  great  and 
painful  for  him  ;  he  says,  this  book,  "  which  has  made  me  lean 
for  many  years."  Ah  yes,  it  was  won,  all  of  it,  with  pain  and 


88  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

sore  toil, — not  in  sport,  but  in  grim  earnest.  His  book,  as 
indeed  most  good  books  are,  has  been  written,  in  many  senses, 
with  his  heart's  blood.  It  is  his  whole  history,  this  book. 
He  died  after  finishing  it ;  not  yet  very  old,  at  the  age  of  fifty- 
six  ; — broken-hearted  rather,  as  is  said.  He  lies  buried  in  his 
death-city  Ravenna  :  Hie  daudor  Dantes  patriis  extorris  ab  oris. 
The  Florentines  begged  back  his  body,  in  a  century  after ;  the 
Ravenna  people  would  not  give  it.  "  Here  ana  I  Dante  laid, 
shut-out  from  my  native  shores." 

I  said,  Dante's  poem  was  a  song  :  it  is  Tieck  who  calls  it  "  a 
mystic  unfathomable  song  ; "  and  such  is  literally  the  character 
of  it.  Coleridge  remarks  very  pertinently  somewhere,  that 
wherever  you  find  a  sentence  musically  worded,  of  true  rhythm 
and  melody  in  the  words,  there  is  something  deep  and  good 
in  the  meaning  too.  For  body  and  soul,  word  and  idea,  go 
strangely  together  here  as  everywhere.  Song  :  we  said  before, 
it  was  the  heroic  of  speech  !  All  old  poems,  Homer's  and  the 
rest,  are  authentically  songs.  I  would  say,  in  strictness,  that 
all  right  poems  are  ;  that  whatsoever  is  not  sung  is  properly 
no  poem,  but  a  piece  of  prose  cramped  into  jingling  lines, — 
to  the  great  injury  of  the  grammar,  to  the  great  grief  of  the 
reader,  for  most  part !  What  we  want  to  get  at  is  the  thought 
the  man  had,  if  he  had  any  :  why  should  he  twist  it  into  jingle, 
if  he  could  speak  it  out  plainly  ?  It  is  only  when  the  heart  of 
him  is  rapt  into  true  passion  of  melody,  and  the  very  tones  of 
him,  according  to  Coleridge's  remark,  become  musical  by  the 
greatness,  depth  and  music  of  his  thoughts,  that  we  can  give 
him  right  to  rhyme  and  sing  ;  that  we  call  him  a  poet,  and 
listen  to  him  as  the  heroic  of  speakers, — whose  speech  is  song. 
Pretenders  to  this  are  many ;  and  to  an  earnest  reader,  I  doubt, 
it  is  for  most  part  a  very  melancholy,  not  to  say  an  insupport- 
able business,  that  of  reading  rhyme.  Rhyme  that  had  no 
inward  necessity  to  be  rhymed  ; — it  ought  to  have  told  us 
plainly,  without  any  jingle,  what  it  was  aiming  at.  I  would 
advise  all  men  who  can  speak  their  thought,  not  to  sing  it ;  to 
understand  that,  in  a  serious  time,  among  serious  men,  there 
is  no  vocation  in  them  for  singing  it.  Precisely  as  we  love 
the  true  song,  and  are  charmed  by  it  as  by  something  divine, 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  89 

so  shall  we  hate  the  false  song  and  account  it  a  mere  wooden 
noise,  a  thing  hollow,  superfluous,  altogether  an  insincere  and 
offensive  thing. 

I  give  Dante  my  highest  praise  when  I  say  of  his  "  Divine 
Comedy "  that  it  is,  in  all  senses,  genuinely  a  song.  In  the 
very  sound  of  it  there  is  a  canto  fermo  •  it  proceeds  as  by  a 
chant.  The  language,  his  simple  terza  rima,  doubtless  helped 
him  in  this.  One  reads  along  naturally  with  a  sort  of  lilt. 
But  I  add,  that  it  could  not  be  otherwise  :  for  the  essence  and 
material  of  the  work  are  themselves  rhythmic.  Its  depth, 
and  rapt  passion  and  sincerity,  makes  it  musical ; — go  deep 
enough,  there  is  music  everywhere.  A  true  inward  sym- 
metry, what  one  calls  an  architectural  harmony,  reigns  in  it, 
proportionates  it  all ;  architectural ;  which  also  partakes  of  the 
character  of  music.  The  three  kingdoms,  Inferno,  Purya- 
torio,  Paradiso,  look-out  on  one  another  like  compartments 
of  a  great  edifice  ;  a  great  supernatural  world-cathedral,  piled- 
up  there,  stern,  solemn,  awful ;  Dante's  World  of  Souls  !  It  is, 
at  bottom,  the  sincerest  of  all  poems  ;  sincerity,  here  too,  we  find 
to  be  the  measure  of  worth.  It  came  deep  out  of  the 
author's  heart  of  hearts ;  and  it  goes  deep,  and  through  long 
generations,  into  ours.  The  people  of  Verona,  when  they 
saw  him  on  the  streets,  used  to  say,  "  Eccovi  I'  uom  ch'  c  stato 
all'  Inferno,  See,  there  is  the  man  that  was  in  hell !  "  Ah  yes, 
he  had  been  in  hell ; — in  hell  enough,  in  long  severe  sorrow 
and  struggle  ;  as  the  like  of  him  is  pretty  sure  to  have  been. 
Commedias  that  come-out  divine  are  not  accomplished  other- 
wise. Thought,  true  labor  of  any  kind,  highest  virtue  itself, 
is  it  not  the  daughter  of  pain?  Born  as  out  of  the  black 
whirlwind  ; — true  effort,  in  fact,  as  of  a  captive  struggling 
to  free  himself  :  that  is  thought.  In  all  ways  we  are  "  to 
become  perfect  through  suffering." — But,  as  I  say,  no  work 
known  to  me  is  so  elaborated  as  this  of  Dante's.  It  has  all 
been  as  if  molten,  in  the  hottest  furnace  of  his  soul.  It  had^ 
made  him  "lean "for  many  years.  Not  the  general  whole 
only  ;  every  compartment  of  it  is  worked-out,  with  intense 
earnestness,  into  truth,  into  clear  visuality.  Each  answers 
to  the  other  ;  each  fits  in  its  place,  like  a  marble  stone  accu- 


90  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

rately  hewn  and  polished.  It  is  the  soul  of  Dante,  and  in  this 
the  soul  of  the  middle  ages,  rendered  forever  rhythmically 
visible  there.  No  light  task  ;  a  right  intense  one  :  but  a  task 
which  is  done. 

Perhaps  one  would  say,  intensity,  with  the  much  that  de- 
pends on  it,  is  the  prevailing  character  of  Dante's  genius. 
Dante  does  not  come  before  us  as  a  large  catholic  mind  ;  rather 
as  a  narrow,  and  even  sectarian  mind  :  it  is  partly  the  fruit  of 
his  age  and  position,  but  partly  too  of  his  own  nature.  His 
greatness  has,  in  all  senses,  concentrated  itself  into  fiery  em- 
phasis and  depth.  He  is  world-great  not  because  he  is  world- 
wide, but  because  he  is  world-deep.  Through  all  objects  he 
pierces  as  it  were  down  into  the  heart  of  being.  I  know 
nothing  so  intense  as  Dante.  Consider,  for  example,  to  be- 
gin with  the  outermost  development  of  his  intensity,  consider 
how  he  paints.  He  has  a  great  power  of  vision  ;  seizes  the 
very  type  of  a  thing  ;  presents  that  and  nothing  more.  You 
remember  that  first  view  he  gets  of  the  Hall  of  Dite  :  red  pin- 
nacle, redhot  cone  of  iron  glowing  through  the  dim  immensity 
of  gloom  ; — so  vivid,  so  distinct,  visible  at  once  and  forever ! 
It  is  as  an  emblem  of  the  whole  genius  of  Dante.  There  is  a 
brevity,  an  abrupt  precision  in  him  :  Tacitus  is  not  briefer, 
more  condensed  ;  and  then  in  Dante  it  seems  a  natural  con- 
densation, spontaneous  to  the  man.  One  smiting  word  ;  and 
then  there  is  silence,  nothing  more  said.  His  silence  is  more 
eloquent  than  words.  It  is  strange  with  what  a  sharp  de- 
cisive grace  he  snatches  the  true  likeness  of  a  matter  :  cuts 
into  the  matter  as  with  a  pen  of  fire.  Plutus,  the  blustering 
giant,  coll  apses  at  Virgil's  rebuke  ;  it  is  "as  the  sails  sink,  the 
mast  being  suddenly  broken."  Or  that  poor  Brunetto  Latini, 
with  the  cotto  aspetto,  "  face  baked"  parched  brown  and  lean  ; 
and  the  "fiery  snow"  that  falls  on  them  there,  a  "fiery  snow 
without  wind,"  slow,  deliberate,  never-ending  !  Or  the  lids 
C>i  those  tombs  ;  square  sarcophaguses,  in  that  silent  dim- 
burning  hall,  each  with  its  soul  in  torment ;  the  lids  laid  open 
there ;  they  are  to  be  shut  at  the  day  of  judgment,  through 
eternity.  And  how  Farinata  rises  ;  and  how  Cavalcante  falls 
— at  hearing  of  his  son,  and  the  past  tense  "fue  "  /  The 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  91 

very  movements  in  Dante  have  something  brief ;  swift,  de- 
cisive, almost  military.  It  is  of  the  inmost  essence  of  his 
genius  this  sort  of  painting.  The  fiery,  swift  Italian  nature 
of  the  man,  so  silent,  passionate,  with  its  quick  abrupt  move- 
ments, its  silent  "  pale  rages,"  speaks,  itself  in  these  things. 

For  though  this  of  painting  is  one  of  the  outermost  de- 
velopments of  a  man,  it  comes  like  all  else  from  the  essential 
faculty  of  him  ;  it  is  physiognomical  of  the  whole  man.  Find 
a  man  whose  words  paint  you  a  likeness,  you  have  found  a 
man  worth  something  ;  mark  his  manner  of  doing  it,  as  very 
characteristic  of  him.  In  the  first  place,  he  could  not  have 
discerned  the  object  at  ah1,  or  seen  the  vital  type  of  it,  unless 
he  had,  what  we  may  call,  sympathized  with  it, — had  sym- 
pathy in  him  to  bestow  on  objects.  He  must  have  been  sin- 
cere about  it  too  ;  sincere  and  sympathetic  :  a  man  without 
worth  cannot  give  you  the  likeness  of  any  object ;  he  dwells 
on  vague  outwardness,  fallacy  and  trivial  hearsay,  about  all 
objects.  And  indeed  may  we  not  say  that  intellect  altogether 
expresses  itself  in  this  power  of  discerning  what  an  object  is  ? 
Whatsoever  of  faculty  a  man's  mind  may  have  will  come  out 
here.  Is  it  even  of  business,  a  matter  to  be  done  ?  The 
gifted  man  is  he  who  sees  the  essential  point,  and  leaves  all 
the  rest  aside  as  surplusage  ;  it  is  his  faculty  too,  the  man  of 
business's  faculty,  that  he  discern  the  true  likeness,  not  the 
false  superficial  one,  of  the  thing  he  has  got  to  work  in.  And 
how  much  of  morality  is  in  the  kind  of  insight  we  get  of  any- 
thing :  "  the  eye  seeing  in  ah1  things  what  it  brought  with  it 
the  faculty  of  seeing  !  "  To  the  mean  eye  all  things  are  triv- 
ial, as  certainly  as  to  the  jaundiced  they  are  yellow.  Raphael, 
the  painters  tell  us,  is  the  best  of  all  portrait-painters  withal. 
No  most  gifted  eye  can  exhaust  the  significance  of  any  object. 
In  the  commonest  human  face  there  lies  more  than  Raphael 
will  take-away  with  him. 

Dante's  painting  is  not  graphic  only,  brief,  true,  and  of  a 
vividness  as  of  fire  in  dark  night ;  taken  on  the  wider  scale, 
it  is  every  way  noble,  and  the  outcome  of  a  great  soul.  Frau- 
cesca  and  her  lover,  what  qualities  in  that !  A  thing  woven 
as  out  of  rainbows,  on  a  ground  of  eternal  black.  A  small 


02  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

flute-voice  of  infinite  wail  speaks  there,  into  our  very  heart  of 
hearts.  A  touch  of  womanhood  in  it  too  :  della  bella  ijersona, 
eke  mi  fa  tolta  ;  and  how,  even  in  the  pit  of  woe,  it  is  a  solace 
that  he  will  never  part  from  her !  Saddest  tragedy  in  these 
alti  guai.  And  the  racking  winds,  in  that  aer  bruno,  whirl 
them  away  again,  to  wail  forever ! — Strange  to  think  :  Dante 
was  the  friend  of  this  poor  Francesca's  father  ;  Francesca  her- 
self may  have  sat  upon  the  poet's  knee,  as  a  bright  innocent 
little  child.  Infinite  pity,  yet  also  infinite  rigor  of  law  :  it  is 
so  nature  is  made  ;  it  is  so  Dante  discerned  that  she  was 
made.  What  a  paltry  notion  is  that  of  his  "  Divine  Com- 
edy's "  being  a  poor  splenetic  impotent  terrestrial  libel ;  put- 
ting those  into  hell  whom  he  could  not  be  avenged-upon  on 
earth  !  I  suppose  if  ever  pity,  tender  as  a  mother's,  was  in 
the  heart  of  any  man,  it  was  in  Dante's.  But  a  man  who 
does  not  know  rigor  cannot  pity  either.  His  very  pity  will 
be  cowardly,  egoistic, — sentimentality,  or  little  better.  I 
know  not  in  the  world  an  affection  equal  to  that  of  Dante. 
It  is  a  tenderness,  a  trembling,  longing,  pitying  love  :  like  the 
wail  of  eeolean  harps,  soft,  soft ;  like  a  child's  young  heart ; — 
and  then  that  stern,  sore-saddened  heart !  These  longings 
of  his  towards  his  Beatrice  ;  their  meeting  together  in  the 
Paradiao  ;  his  gazing  in  her  pure  transfigured  eyes,  her  that 
had  been  purified  by  death  so  long,  separated  from  him  so 
far  : — one  likens  it  to  the  song  of  angels  ;  it  is  among  the 
purest  utterances  of  affection,  perhaps  the  very  purest,  that 
ever  came  out  of  a  human  soul. 

For  the  intense  Dante  is  intense  in  all  things  ;  he  has  got 
into  the  essence  of  all.  His  intellectual  insight  as  painter,  on 
occasion  too  as  reasoner,  is  but  the  result  of  ah1  other  sorts  of 
intensity.  Morally  great,  above  all,  we  must  call  him  ;  it  is  the 
beginning  of  all.  His  scorn,  his  grief  are  as  transcendent  as 
his  love  ; — as  indeed,  what  are  they  but  the  inverse  or  converse 
of  his  love  ?  "A  Dio  spiacenti  ed  o'  nemici  sui,  Hateful  to 
God  and  to  the  enemies  of  God  :  "  lofty  scorn,  unappeasable 
silent  reprobation  and  aversion  ;  "  Non  rayionam  di  lor,  We 
will  not  speak  of  them,  look  only  and  pass."  Or  think  of  this ; 
"They  have  not  the  hope  to  die,  Non  han  vpcranza  di  morte." 


TUB  HERO  AS  POET.  Oo 

One  day,  it  had  risen  sternly  benign  on  the  scathed,  heart  of 
Dante,  that  he,  wretched,  never-resting,  worn  as  he  was, 
would  fall  surely  die  ;  "  that  destiny  itself  could  not  doom 
him  not  to  die."  Such  words  are  in  this  man.  For  rigor, 
earnestness  and  depth,  he  is  not  to  be  paralleled  in  the  mod- 
ern world  ;  to  seek  his  parallel  we  must  go  into  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  and  live  with  the  antique  prophets  there. 

I  do  not  agree  with  much  modern  criticism,  in  greatly  pre- 
ferring the  Inftrno  to  the  two  other  parts  of  the  Divine  Coin- 
media.  Such  preference  belongs,  I  imagine,  to  our  general 
Byronism  of  taste,  and  is  like  to  be  a  transient  feeling.  The 
Purgatorio  and  Paradiso,  especially  the  former,  one  would 
almost  say,  is  even  more  excellent  than  it.  It  is  a  noble 
thing  that  Purgatorio,  "  Mountain  of  purification;"  an  em- 
blem of  the  noblest  conception  of  that  age.  If  sin  is  so  fatal, 
and  heU  is  and  must  be  so,  rigorous,  awful,  yet  in  repentance 
too  is  man  purified  ;  repentance  is  the  grand  Christian  act. 
It  is  beautiful  how  Dante  works  it  out.  The  tremolar  dell' 
onde,  that  "  trembling "  of  the  ocean-waves,  under  the  first 
pure  gleam  of  morning,  dawning  afar  on  the  wandering  two, 
is  as  the  type  of  an  altered  mood.  Hope  has  now  dawned  ; 
never-dying  hope,  if  in  company  still  with  heavy  sorrow. 
The  obscure  sojourn  of  daemons  and  reprobate  is  underfoot ; 
a  soft  breathing  of  penitence  mounts  higher  and  higher,  to 
the  throne  of  mercy  itself.  "  Pray  for  me,"  the  denizens  of 
that  mount  of  pain  all  say  to  him.  "Tell  my  Giovanna  to 
pray  for  me,"  my  daughter  Giovanna  ;  "  I  think  her  mother 
loves  me  no  more  !  "  They  toil  painfully  up  by  that  winding 
steep,  "bent-bown  like  corbels  of  a  building,"  some  of  them, 
— crushed-together  so  "  for  the  sin  of  pride  ; "  yet  neverthe- 
less in  years,  in  ages  and  seons,  they  shall  have  reached  the 
top,  which  is  heaven's  gate,  and  by  mercy  shall  have  been  ad- 
mitted in.  The  joy  too  of  all,  when  one  has  prevailed  ;  the 
whole  mountain  shakes  with  joy,  and  a  psalm  of  praise  rises, 
when  one  soul  has  perfected  repentance  and  got  its  sin  and 
misery  left  behind  !  I  call  all  this  a  noble  embodiment  of  a 
true  noble  thought. 

But  indeed  the  three  compartments  mutually  support  one 


04  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

another,  are  indispensable  to  one  another.  The  Paradise,  a 
kind  of  inarticulate  music  to  me,  is  the  redeeming  side  of  the 
Inferno  ;  the  Inferno  without  it  were  untrue.  All  three  make- 
up the  true  unseen  world,  as  figured-in  the  Christianity  of 
the  middle  ages  ;  a  thing  forever  memorable,  forever  true  in 
the  essence  of  it,  to  all  men.  It  was  perhaps  delineated  in  no 
human  soul  with  such  depth  of  veracity  as  in  this  of  Dante's ; 
a  man  sent  to  sing  it,  to  keep  it  long  memorable.  Very  nota- 
ble with  what  brief  simplicity  he  passes  out  of  the  every-day 
reality,  into  the  invisible  one ;  and  in  the  second  and  third 
stanza,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  world  of  spirits  ;  and  dwell 
there,  as  among  things  palpable,  indubitable  !  To  Dante 
they  were  so  ;  the  real  world,  as  it  is  called,  and  its  facts,  was 
but  the  threshold  to  an  infinitely  higher  fact  of  a  world.  At 
bottom,  the  one  was  as  prefer-natural  as  the  other.  Has  not 
each  man  a  soul  ?  He  will  not  only  be  a  spirit,  but  is  one. 
To  the  earnest  Dante  it  is  all  one  visible  fact ;  he  believes  it, 
sees  it ;  is  the  poet  of  it  in  virtue  of  that.  Sincerity,  I  say 
again,  is  the  saving  merit,  now  as  always. 

Dante's  hell,  purgatory,  paradise,  are  a  symbol  withal,  an 
emblematic  representation  of  his  belief  about  this  universe  : 
— some  critic  in  a  future  age,  like  those  Scandinavian  ones  the 
other  day,  who  has  ceased  altogether  to  think  as  Dante  did, 
may  find  this  too  an  "  allegory,"  perhaps  an  idle  allegory !  It 
is  a  sublime  embodiment,  or  sublimest,  of  the  soul  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  expresses,  as  in  huge  worldwide  architectural  em- 
blems, how  the  Christian  Dante  felt  good  and  evil  to  be  the 
two  polar  elements  of  this  creation,  on  which  it  all  turns ; 
that  these  two  differ  not  by  preferabUily  of  one  to  the  other, 
but  by  incompatibility  absolute  and  infinite  ;  that  the  one  is 
excellent  and  high  as  light  and  heaven,  the  other  hideous, 
black  as  Gehenna  and  the  pit  of  hell !  Everlasting  justice, 
yet  with  penitence,  with  everlasting  pity, — all  Christianism, 
as  Dante  and  the  middle  ages  had  it,  is  emblemed  here.  Em- 
blemed :  and  yet,  as  I  urged  the  other  day,  with  what  entire 
truth  of  purpose  ;  how  unconscious  of  any  embleming !  Hell, 
purgatory,  paradise  :  these  things  were  not  fashioned  as  em- 
blems ;  was  there,  in  our  modern  European  mind,  any  thought 


TUE  HERO  AS  POET.  95 

at  nil  of  their  being  emblems!  Were  they  not  indubitable 
awful  facts ;  the  whole  heart  of  mail  taking  them  for  practi- 
cally true,  all  nature  everywhere  confirming  them  ?  So  is  it 
always  in  these  things.  Men  do  not  believe  an  allegory.  The 
future  critic,  whatever  his  new  thought  may  be,  who  consid- 
ers this  of  Dante  to  have  been  all  got-up  as  an  allegory,  will 
commit  one  sore  mistake  ! — Paganism  we  recognized  as  a  ve- 
racious expression  of  the  earnest  awe-struck  feeling  of  man 
toward  the  universe  ;  veracious,  true  once,  and  still  not  with- 
out worth  for  vis.  But  mark  here  the  difference  of  Paganism 
and  Christianism ;  one  great  difference.  Paganism  emblemed 
chiefly  the  operations  of  nature  ;  the  destinies,  efforts,  com- 
binations, vicissitudes  of  things  and  men  in  this  world ;  Chris- 
tianism emblemed  the  law  of  human  duty,  the  moral  law  of 
man.  One  was  for  the  sensuous  nature :  a  rude,  helpless 
utterance  of  the  first  thought  of  men, — the  chief  recognized 
virtue,  courage,  superiority  to  fear.  The  other  was  not  for 
the  sensuous  nature,  but  for  the  moral.  What  a  progress  is 
here,  if  in  that  one  respect  only  ! — 

And  so  in  this  Dante,  as  we  said,  had  ten  silent  centuries, 
in  a  very  strange  way,  found  a  voice.  The  "Diviua  Corn- 
media  "  is  of  Dante's  writing ;  yet  in  truth  it  belongs  to  ten 
Christian  centuries,  only  the  finishing  of  it  is  Dante's.  So 
always.  The  craftsman  there,  the  smith  with  that  metal  of 
his,  with  these  tools,  with  these  cunning  methods, — how  little 
of  all  he  does  is  properly  his  work  !  All  past  inventive  men 
work  there  with  him  ; — as  indeed  with  all  of  us,  in  all  things. 
Dante  is  the  spokesman  of  the  middle  ages  ;  the  thought  they 
lived  by  stands  here,  in  everlasting  music.  These  sublime 
ideas  of  his,  terrible  and  beautiful,  are  the  fruit  of  the  Chris- 
tian meditation  of  ah1  the  good  men  who  had  gone  before  him. 
Precious  they  ;  but  also  is  not  he  precious  ?  Much,  had  not  he 
spoken,  would  have  been  dumb  ;  not  dead,  yet  living  voiceless. 

On  the  whole,  is  it  not  an  utterance,  this  mystic  song,  at 
once  of  one  of  the  greatest  human  souls,  and  of  the  highest 
thing  that  Europe  had  hitherto  realized  for  itself?  Christian- 
ism,  as  Dante  sings  it,  is  another  than  Paganism  in  the  rude 


96  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

Norse  mind  ;  another  tlmn  "Bastard  Christianism  "  half-artic- 
ulately  spoken  in  the  Arab  desert  seven  hundred  years  before ! 
— The  noblest  idea  made  real  hitherto  among  men,  is  sung, 
and  emblemed  forth  abidingly,  by  one  of  the  noblest  men.  In 
the  one  sense  and  in  the  other,  are  we  not  right  glad  to  pos- 
sess it?  As  I  calculate,  it  may  last  yet  for  long  thousands  of 
years.  For  the  thing  that  is  tittered  from  the  inmost  parts 
of  a  man's  soul,  differs  altogether  from  what  is  uttered  by  the 
outer  part.  The  outer  is  of  the  day,  under  the  empire  of 
mode  ;  the  outer  passes  away,  in  swift  endless  changes ;  the 
inmost  is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and  forever.  True  souls, 
in  all  generations  of  the  world,  who  look  on  this  Dante,  will 
find  a  brotherhood  in  him ;  the  deep  sincerity  of  his  thoughts, 
his  woes  and  hopes,  will  speak  likewise  to  their  sincerity ; 
they  will  feel  that  this  Dante  too  was  a  brother.  Napoleon 
in  Saint  Helena  is  charmed  with  the  genial  veracity  of  old 
Homer.  The  oldest  Hebrew  prophet,  under  a  vesture  the 
most  diverse  from  ours,  does  yet,  because  he  speaks  from  the 
heart  of  man,  speak  to  all  men's  hearts.  It  is  the  one  sole 
secret  of  continuing  long  memorable.  Dante,  for  depth  of 
sincerity,  is  like  an  antique  prophet  too ;  his  words,  like  theirs, 
come  from  his  veiy  heart.  One  need  not  wonder  if  it  were 
predicted  that  his  poem  might  be  the  most  enduring  thing 
our  Europe  has  yet  made  ;  for  nothing  so  endures  as  a  truly 
spoken  word.  All  cathedrals,  pontificalities,  brass  and  stone, 
and  outer  arrangement  never  so  lasting,  are  brief  in  compari- 
son to  an  unfathomable  heart-song  like  this  :  one  feels  as  if  it 
might  survive,  still  of  importance  to  men,  when  these  had  all 
sunk  into  new  irrecognizable  combinations,  and  had  ceased 
individually  to  be.  Europe  has  made  much ;  great  cities, 
great  empires,  encyclopaedias,  creeds,  bodies  of  opinion  and 
practice :  but  it  has  made  little  of  the  class  of  Dante's  thought. 
Homer  yet  is,  veritably  present  face  to  face  with  every  open 
soul  of  us  ;  and  Greece,  where  is  it  ?  Desolate  for  thousands 
of  years ;  away,  vanished ;  a  bewildered  heap  of  stone  and 
rubbish,  the  life  and  existence  of  it  all  gone.  Like  a  dream  ; 
like  the  dust  of  King  Agamemnon  !  Greece  was  ;  Greece,  ex- 
cept in  the  words  it  spoke,  is  not. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  97 

The  uses  of  tbis  Dante  ?  We  will  not  say  much  about  his 
"  uses."  A  human  soul  who  has  once  got  into  that  primal 
element  of  song,  and  sung-forth  fitly  somewhat  therefrom,  has 
worked  in  the  depths  of  our  existence  ;  feeding  through  long 
times  the  life-roote  of  all  excellent  human  things  whatsoever, 
— in  a  way  that  "  utilities  "  will  not  succeed  well  in  calculat- 
ing !  We  will  not  estimate  the  sun  by  the  quantity  of  gas- 
light it  saves  us  :  Dante  shall  be  invaluable,  or  of  no  value. 
One  remark  I  may  make  :  the  contrast  in  this  respect  between 
the  Hero-poet  and  the  Hero-prophet.  In  a  hundred  -  years, 
Mohammed  as  we  saw,  had  his  Arabians  at  Grenada  and  at 
Delhi  ;  Dante's  Italians  seem  to  be  yet  very  much  where  they 
were.  Shall  we  say,  then,  Dante's  effect  on  the  world  was 
small  in  comparison  ?  Not  so  :  his  arena  is  far  more  re- 
stricted ;  but  also  it  is  far  nobler,  clearer  ; — perhaps  not  less 
but  more  important.  Mohammed  speaks  to  great  masses  of 
men,  in  the  coarse  dialect  adapted  to  such  ;  a  dialect  filled  with 
inconsistencies,  crudities,  follies  :  on  the  great  masses  alone  can 
he  act,  and  there  with  good  and  with  evil  strangely  blended. 
Dante  speaks  to  the  noble,  the  pure  and  great,  in  all  times  and 
places.  Neither  does  he  grow  obsolete,  as  the  other  does. 
Dante  burns  as  a  pure  star,  fixed  there  in  the  firmanent,  at 
which  the  great  and  the  high  of  all  ages  kindle  themselves  : 
he  is  the  possession  of  all  the  chosen  of  the  world  for  un- 
counted time.  Dante,  one  calculates,  may  long  survive  Mo- 
hammed. In  this  way  the  balance  may  be  made  straight 
again. 

But,  at  any  rate,  it  is  not  by  what  is  called  their  effect  on 
the  world,  by  what  we  can  judge  of  their  effect  there,  that  a 
man  and  his  work  are  measured.  Effect  ?  Influence  ?  Util- 
ity ?  Let  a  man  do  his  work  ;  the  fruit  of  it  is  the  care  of 
another  than  he.  It  will  grow  its  own  fruit ;  and  whether  em- 
bodied in  Caliph  thrones  and  Arabian  conquests,  so  that  it 
"  fills  all  morning  and  evening  newspapers,"  and  all  histories, 
which  are  a  kind  of  distilled  newspapers  ;  or  not  embodied  so 
at  all ; — what  matters  that  ?  That  is  not  the  real  fruit  of  it ! 
The  Arabian  Caliph,  in  so  far  only  as  he  did  something,  was 
something.  If  the  great  cause  of  man,  and  man's  work  in 
7 


98  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

God's  earth,  got  no  furtherance  from  the  Arabian  Caliph, 
then  no  matter  how  many  scimetars  he  drew,  how  many  gold 
piasters  pocketed,  and  what  uproar  and  blaring  he  made  in 
this  world, — he  was  but  a  loud-sounding  inanity  and  futility  ; 
at  bottom,  he  was  not  at  all.  Let  us  honor  the  great  empire 
of  silence,  x>nce  .more  !  The  boundless  treasury  which  we  do 
not  jingle  in  our  pockets,  or  count  up  and  present  before 
men  ?  It  is  perhaps,  of  all  things,  the  usefulest  for  each  of  us 
to  do,  in  these  loud  times. — 

As  Dante,  the  Italian  man,  was  sent  into  our  world  to  em- 
body musically  the  religion  of  the  middle  ages,  the  religion  of 
our  modern  Europe,  its  inner  life ;  so  Shakespeare,  we  may 
say,  embodies  for  us  the  outer  life  of  our  Europe  as  developed 
then,  its  chivalries,  courtesies,  humors,  ambitions,  what  prac- 
tical way  of  thinking,  acting,  looking  at  the  world,  men  then 
had.  As  in  Homer  we  may  still  construe  old  Greece  ;  so  in 
Shakespeare  and  Dante,  after  thousands  of  years,  what  our 
modern  Europe  was,  in  faith  and  in  practice,  will  still  be  leg- 
ible. Dante  has  given  us  the  faith  or  soul :  Shakespeare,  in 
a  not  less  noble  way,  has  given  us  the  practice  or  body.  This 
latter  also  we  were  to  have  ;  a  man  was  sent  for  it,  the  man 
Shakespeare.  Just  when  that  chivalry  way  of  life  had  reached 
its  last  finish,  and  was  on  the  point  of  breaking  down  into 
slow  or  swift  dissolution,  as  we  now  see  it  everywhere,  this 
other  sovereign  poet,  with  his  seeing  eye,  with  his  perennial 
singing  voice,  was  sent  to  take  note  of  it,  to  give  long-endur- 
ing record  of  it.  Two  fit  men  :  Dante,  deep,  fierce  as  the  cen- 
tral fire  of  the  world  ;  Shakespeare,  wide,  placid,  far-seeing 
as  the  sun,  the  upper  light  of  the  world.  Italy  produced  the 
one  world-voice  ;  we  English  had  the  honor  of  producing  the 
other. 

Curious  enough  how,  as  it  were  by  mere  accident,  this  man 
came  to  us.  I  think  always,  so  great,  quiet,  complete  and 
self-sufficing  is  this  Shakespeare,  had  the  Warwickshire  Squire 
not  prosecuted  him  for  deer-stealing,  we  had  perhaps  never 
heard  of  him  as  a  poet !  The  woods  and  skies,  the  rustic  life 
of  man  in  Stratford  there,  had  been  enough  for  this  man ! 


TEE  HERO  AS  POET.  99 

But  indeed  that  strange  outbudding  of  our  whole  English 
existence,  which  we  call  the  Elizabethan  era,  did  not  it  too 
come  as  of  its  own  accord?  The  "Tree  Igdrasil"  buds  and 
withers  by  its  own  laws, — too  deep  for  our  scanning.  Yet  it 
does  bud  and  wither,  and  every  bough  and  leaf  of  it  is  there, 
by  fixed  eternal  laws  ;  not  a  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  but  comes  at 
the  hour  fit  for  him.  Curious,  I  say,  and  not  sufficiently  con- 
sidered ;  how  everything  does  cooperate  with  all  :  not  a  leaf 
rotting  on  the  highway  but  is  indissoluble  portion  of  solar  and 
stellar  systems  ;  no  thought,  word  or  act  of  man  but  has  sprung 
withal  out  of  all  men,  and  works  sooner  or  later,  recognizably 
or  irrecognizably,  on  all  men  !  It  is  all  a  tree  :  circulation  of 
sap  and  influences,  mutual  communication  of  every  minutest 
leaf  with  the  lowest  talon  of  a  root,  with  every  other  greatest 
and  minutest  portion  of  the  whole.  The  Tree  Igdrasil,  that 
has  its  roots  down  in  the  kingdoms  of  Hela  and  Death,  and 
whose  boughs  overspread  the  highest  heaven  ! — 

In  some  sense  it  may  be  said  that  this  glorious  Elizabethan 
era  with  its  Shakspeare,  as  the  outcome  and  flowerage  of  all 
which  had  preceded  it,  is  itself  attributable  to  the  Catholi- 
cism of  the  middle  ages.  The  Christian  faith,  which  was  the 
theme  of  Dante's  song,  had  produced  this  practical  life  which 
Shakespeare  was  to  sing.  For  religion  then,  as  it  now  and 
always  is,  was  the  soul  of  practice  ;  the  primary  vital  fact  in. 
men's  life.  And  remark  here,  as  rather  curious,  that  middle- 
age  Catholicism  was  abolished,  so  far  as  Acts  of  Parliament 
could  abolish  it,  before  Shakespeare,  the  noblest  product  of 
it,  made  his  appearance.  He  did  make  his  appearance  never- 
theless. Nature  at  her  own  time,  with  Catholicism  or  what 
else  might  be  necessary,  sent  him  forth  ;  taking  small  thought 
of  Acts  of  Parliament.  King-Henrys,  Queen-Elizabeths  go 
their  way  ;  and  nature  too  goes  hers.  Acts  of  Parliament,  on 
the  whole,  are  small,  notwithstanding  the  noise  they  make. 
What  Act  of  Parliament,  debate  at  St.  Stephen's,  oa  the  hust- 
ings or  elsewhere,  was  it  that  brought  this  Shakespeare  into 
being  ?  No  dining  at  Freemasons'  Tavern,  opening  subscrip- 
tion-lists, selling  of  shares,  and  infinite  other  jangling  and 
true  or  false  endeavoring !  This  Elizabethan  era,  and  all  its 


100  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

nobleness  and  blessedness,  came  without  proclamation,  prep- 
aration of  ours.  Priceless  Shakespeare  was  the  free  gift  of 
nature  ;  given  altogether  silently  ; — received  altogether  si- 
lently, as  if  it  had  been  a  thing  of  little  account.  And  yet, 
very  literally,  it  is  a  priceless  thing.  One  should  look  at  that 
side  of  matters  too. 

Of  this  Shakespeare  of  ours,  perhaps  the  opinion  one  some- 
times hears  a  little  idolatrously  expressed  is,  in  fact,  the  right 
one  ;  I  think  the  best  judgment  not  of  this  country  only,  but 
of  Europe  at  large,  is  slowly  pointing  to  the  conclusion,  that 
Shakespeare  is  the  chief  of  all  poets  hitherto  ;  the  greatest  in- 
tellect who,  in  our  recorded  world,  has  left  record  of  himself 
in  the  way  of  literature.  On  the  whole,  I  know  not  such  a 
power  of  vision,  such  a  faculty  of  thought,  if  we  take  all  the 
characters  of  it,  in  any  other  man.  Such  a  calmness  of  depth  ; 
placid  joyous  strength ;  all  things  imaged  in  that  great  soul 
of  his  so  true  and  clear,  as  in  a  tranquil  unfathomable  sea !  It 
has  been  said,  that  in  the  constructing  of  Shakespeare's  dramas 
there  is,  apart  from  all  other  "  faculties "  as  they  are  called, 
an  understanding  manifested,  equal  to  that  in  Bacon's  "  Novum 
Organum."  That  is  true  ;  and  it  is  not  a  truth  that  strikes 
every  one.  It  would  become  more  apparent  if  we  tried,  any 
of  us  for  himself,  how,  out  of  Shakespeare's  dramatic  ma- 
terials, we  could  fashion  such  a  result !  The  built  house 
seems  all  so  fit, — everywhere  as  it  should  be,  as  if  it  came 
there  by  its  own  law  and  the  nature  of  things, — we  forget  the 
rude  disorderly  quarry  it  was  shaped  from.  The  very  perfec- 
tion of  the  house,  as  if  nature  herself  had  made  it,  hides  the 
builder's  merit.  Perfect,  more  perfect  than  any  other  man, 
we  may  call  Shakespeare  in  this  ;  he  discerns,  knows  as  by  in- 
stinct, what  condition  he  works  under,  what  his  materials  are, 
what  his  own  force  and  its  relation  to  them  is.  It  is  not  a 
transitory  glance  of  insight  that  wiU  suffice  ;  it  is  deliberate 
illumination  of  the  whole  matter  ;  it  is  a  calmly  seeing  eye  ;  a 
great  intellect,  in  short.  How  a  man,  of  some  wide  thing  that 
he  has  witnessed,  will  construct  a  narrative,  what  kind  of  pict- 
ure and  delineation  he  will  give  of  it, — is  the  best  measure 
you  could  get  of  what  intellect  is  in  the  man.  Which  circum- 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  101 

stance  is  vital  and  shall  stand  prominent ;  which  unessential, 
fit  to  be  suppressed  ;  where  is  the  true  beginning,  the  true  se- 
quence and  ending  ?  To  find  out  this,  you  task  the  whole 
force  of  insight  that  is  in  the  man.  He  must  understand  the 
thing  ;  according  to  the  depth  of  his  understanding,  will  the 
fitness  of  his  answer  be.  You  will  try  him  so.  Does  like  join 
itself  to  like  ;  does  the  spirit  of  method  stir  in  that  confusion, 
so  that  its  embroilment  becomes  order  ?  Can  the  man  say, 
Fiat  lux,  let  there  be  light ;  and  out  of  chaos  make  a  world  ? 
Precisely  as  there  is  light  in  himself,  will  he  accomplish  this. 

Or  indeed  we  may  say  again,  it  is  in  what  I  called  portrait- 
painting,  delineating  of  men  and  things,  especially  of  men, 
that  Shakespeare  is  great.  All  the  greatness  of  the  man  comes 
out  decisively  here.  It  is  unexampled,  I  think,  that  calm 
creative  perspicacity  of  Shakespeare.  The  thing  he  looks  at 
reveals  not  this  or  that  face  of  it,  but  its  inmost  heart,  and 
generic  secret  :  it  dissolves  itself  as  in  light  before  him,  so 
that  he  discerns  the  perfect  structure  of  it.  Creative,  we  said  : 
poetic  creation,  what  is  this  too  but  seeing  the  thing  suffi- 
ciently ?  The  word  that  will  describe  the  thing,  follows  of  itself 
from  such  clear  intense  sight  of  the  thing.  And  is  not  Shake- 
speare's morality,  his  valor,  candor,  tolerance,  truthfulness  ; 
his  whole  victorious  strength  and  greatness,  which  can  tri- 
umph over  such  obstructions,  visible  there  too  ?  Great  as  the 
world  !  No  twisted,  poor  convex-concave  mirror,  reflecting  all 
objects  with  its  own  convexities  and  concavities  ;  a  perfectly 
level  mirror  ; — that  is  to  say  withal,  if  we  will  understand  it, 
a  man  justly  related  to  ah1  things  and  men,  a  good  man.  It 
is  truly  a  lordly  spectacle  how  this  great  soul  takes-in  all  kinds 
of  men  and  objects,  a  Falstaff,  an  Othello,  a  Juliet,  a  Corio- 
lanus  ;  sets  them  all  forth  to  us  in  their  round  completeness  ; 
loving,  just,  the  equal  brother  of  all.  "  Novum  Organum," 
and  all  the  intellect  you  will  find  in  Bacon,  is  of  a  quite  sec- 
ondary' order ;  earthy,  material,  poor  in  comparison  with  this. 
Among  modem  men,  one  finds,  in  strictness,  almost  nothing 
of  the  same  rank.  Goethe  alone,  since  the  days  of  Shake- 
speare, reminds  me  of  it.  Of  him  too  you  say  that  he  saiv  the 
object ;  you  may  say  what  he  himself  says  of  Shakespeare  : 


102  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

"  His  characters  are  like  watches  with  dial-plates  of  transpar- 
ent crystal ;  they  show  you  the  hour  like  others,  and  the  in- 
ward mechanism  also  is  all  visible." 

The  seeing  eye  !  It  is  this  that  discloses  the  inner  harmony 
of  things  ;  what  nature  meant,  what  musical  idea  nature  has 
wrapped-up  in  these  often  rough  embodiments.  Something 
she  did  mean.  To  the  seeing  eye  that  something  were  dis- 
cernible. Are  they  base,  miserable  things?  You  can  laugh 
over  them,  you  can  weep  over  them  ;  you  can  in  some  way  or 
other  genially  relate  yourself  to  them ; — you  can,  at  lowest, 
hold  your  peace  about  them,  turn  away  your  own  and  others' 
face  from  them,  till  the  hour  come  for  practically  extei'ini- 
nating  and  extinguishing  them  !  At  bottom,  it  is  the  poet's 
first  gift,  as  it  is  ah1  men's,  that  he  have  intellect  enough.  He 
will  be  a  poet  if  he  have  ;  a  poet  in  word  ;  or  failing  that, 
perhaps  still  better,  a  poet  in  act.  Whether  he  write  at  all ; 
and  if  so,  whether  in  prose  or  in  verse,  will  depend  on  acci- 
dents ;  who  knows  on  what  extremely  trivial  accidents, — per- 
haps on  his  having  had  a  singing-master,  on  his  being  taught 
to  sing  in  his  boyhood  !  But  the  faculty  which  enables  him 
to  discern  the  inner  heart  of  things,  and  the  harmony  that 
dwells  there  (for  whatsoever  exists  has  a  harmony  in  the  heart 
of  it,  or  it  would  not  hold  together  and  exist),  is  not  the  re- 
sult of  habits  or  accidents,  but  the  gift  of  nature  herself  ;  the 
primary  outfit  for  a  heroic  man  in  what  sort  soever.  To  tho 
poet,  as  to  every  other,  we  say  first  of  all,  see.  If  you  cannot 
do  that,  it  is  of  no  use  to  keep  stringing  rhymes  together, 
jingling  sensibilities  against  each  other,  and  name  yourelf  a, 
poet ;  there  is  no  hope  for  you.  If  you  can,  there  is,  in  prose 
or  verse,  in  action  or  speculation,  all  manner  of  hope.  The 
crabbed  old  schoolmaster  used  to  ask,  when  they  brought  him 
a  new  pupil,  "  But  are  ye  sure  he's  not  a  dunce  f "  Why, 
really  one  might  ask  the  same  thing,  in  regard  to  every  man 
proposed  for  whatsoever  function  ;  and  consider  it  as  the  one 
inquiry  needful :  Are  ye  sure  he's  not  a  dunce  ?  There  is,  in 
this  world,  no  other  entirely  fatal  person. 

For,  in  fact,  I  say  the  degree  of  vision  that  dwells  in  a  man 
is  a  correct  measure  of  the  man.  If  called  to  define  Shake- 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  103 

speare's  faculty,  I  should  say  superiority  of  intellect,  and  think 
I  had  included  all  under  that.  What  indeed  are  faculties? 
We  talk  of  faculties  as  if  they  were  distinct,  things  separable  ; 
as  if  a  man  had  intellect,  imagination,  fancy,  &c.,  as  he  has 
hands,  feet  and  arms.  That  is  a  capital  error.  Then  again, 
we  hear  of  a  man's  "  inteUectual  nature,"  and  of  his  "moral 
nature,"  as  if  these  again  were  divisible,  and  existed  apart. 
Necessities  of  language  do  perhaps  prescribe  such  forms  of 
utterance  ;  we  must  speak,  I  am  aware,  in  that  way,  if  we  are 
to  speak  at  all.  But  words  ought  not  to  harden  into  things 
for  us.  It  seems  to  me,  our  apprehension  of  this  matter  is, 
for  most  part,  radically  falsified  thereby.  We  ought  to  know 
withal,  and  to  keep  forever  in  mind,  that  these  divisions  are 
at  bottom  but  names  ;  that  man's  spiritual  nature,  the  vital 
force  which  dwells  in  him,  is  essentially  one  and  indivisible  ; 
that  what  we  call  imagination,  fancy,  understanding,  and  so 
forth,  are  but  different  figures  of  the  same  power  of  insight, 
all  indissolubly  connected  with  each  other,  physiognomically 
related  ;  that  if  we  knew  one  of  them,  we  might  know  all  of 
them.  Morality  itself,  what  we  call  the  moral  quality  of  a 
man,  what  is  this  but  another  side  of  the  one  vital  force 
whereby  he  is  and  works  ?  All  that  a  man  does  is  physiog- 
nomical of  him.  You  may  see  how  a  man  would  fight,  by  the 
way  in  which  he  sings ;  his  courage,  or  want  of  courage,  is 
visible  in  the  word  he  utters,  in  the  opinion  he  has  formed, 
no  less  than  in  the  stroke  he  strikes.  He  is  one  ;  and  preaches 
the  same  self  abroad  in  all  these  ways. 

Without  hands  a  man  might  have  feet,  and  could  still  walk  : 
but  consider  it, — without  morality,  intellect  were  impossible 
for  him  ;  a  thoroughly  immoral  man  could  not  know  anything 
at  all !  To  know  a  thing,  what  we  can  call  knowing,  a  man 
must  first  love  the  thing,  sympathize  with  it :  that  is,  be  virt- 
uously related  to  it.  If  he  have  not  the  justice  to  put  down 
his  own  selfishness  at  every  turn,  the  courage  to  stand  by  the 
dangerous  true  at  every  turn,  how  shall  he  know  ?  His  virt- 
ues, all  of  them,  will  lie  recorded  in  his  knowledge.  Nature, 
with  her  truth,  remains  to  the  bad,  to  the  selfish  and  the  pusil- 
lanimous forever  a  sealed  book  :  what  such  can  know  of  nature 


104  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

is  mean,  superficial,  small ;  for  the  uses  of  the  day  merely. — 
But  does  not  the  very  fox  know  something  of  nature  ?  Ex- 
actly so  :  it  knows  where  the  geese  lodge  !  The  human 
Reynard,  very  frequent  everywhere  in  the  world,  what  more 
does  he  know  but  this  and  the  like  of  this  ?  Nay,  it  should 
be  considered  too,  that  if  the  fox  had  not  a  certain  vulpine 
morality,  he  could  not  even  know  where  the  geese  were,  or  get 
at  the  geese  !  If  he  spent  his  time  in  splenetic  atrabiliar  re- 
flections on  his  own  misery,  his  ill  usage  by  nature,  fortune, 
and  other  foxes,  and  so  forth  ;  and  had  not  courage,  prompti- 
tude, practicality,  and  other  suitable  vulpine  gifts  and  graces, 
he  would  catch  no  geese.  We  may  say  of  the  fox  too,  that 
his  morality  and  insight  are  of  the  same  dimensions  ;  differ- 
ent faces  of  the  same  internal  unity  of  vulpine  life  ! — These 
things  are  worth  stating  ;  for  the  contrary  of  them  acts  with 
manifold  veiy  baleful  perversion,  in  this  time  :  what  limita- 
tions, modifications  they  require,  your  own  candor  will 
supply. 

If  I  say,  therefore,  that  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest  of  in- 
tellects, I  have  said  all  concerning  him.  But  there  is  more 
in  Shakespeare's  intellect  than  we  have  yet  seen.  It  is  what 
I  call  an  unconscious  intellect ;  there  is  more  virtue  in  it 
than  he  himself  is  aware  of.  Novalis  beautifully  remarks  of 
him  that  those  dramas  of  his  are  products  of  nature  too,  deep 
as  nature  herself.  I  find  a  great  truth  in  this  saying.  Shake- 
speare's art  is  not  artifice  ;  the  noblest  worth  of  it  is  not  there 
by  plan  or  precontrivance.  It  grows  up  from  the  deeps  of 
nature,  through  this  noble  sincere  soul,  who  is  a  voice  of  na- 
ture. The  latest  generations  of  men  will  find  new  meanings 
in  Shakespeare,  new  elucidations  of  their  own  human  being ; 
"  new  harmonies  with  the  infinite  structure  of  the  universe, 
concurrences  with  later  ideas,  affinities  with  the  higher  powers 
and  senses  of  man."  This  well  deserves  meditating.  It  is 
nature's  highest  reward  to  a  true  simple  great  soul,  that  he 
get  thus  to  be  a  part  of  herself.  Such  a  man's  works,  whatso- 
ever he  with  utmost  conscious  exertion  and  forethought  shall 
accomplish,  grow  up  withal  unconsciously,  from  the  unknown 
deeps  in  him  ; — as  the  oak-tree  grows  from  the  earth's  bosom, 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  105 

as  the  mountains  and  waters  shape  themselves ;  with  a  sym- 
metry grounded  on  nature's  own  laws,  conformable  to  all 
truth  whatsoever.  How  much  in  Shakespeare  lies  hid ;  his 
sorrows,  his  silent  struggles  known  to  himself ;  much  that 
was  not  known  at  all,  not  speakable  at  all ;  like  roots,  like  sap 
and  forces  working  underground  !  Speech  is  great ;  but  si- 
lence is  greater. 

Withal  the  joyful  tranquillity  of  this  man  is  notable.  I  will 
not  blame  Dante  for  his  misery  :  it  is  as  battle  without  vic- 
tory ;  but  true  battle, — the  first,  indispensable  thing.  Yet  I 
call  Shakespeare  greater  than  Dante,  in  that  he  fought  truly, 
and  did  conquer.  Doubt  it  not,  he  had  his  own  sorrows : 
those  Sonnets  of  his  will  even  testify  expressly  in  what  deep 
waters  he  had  waded,  and  swum  struggling  for  his  life  ; — as 
what  man  like  him  ever  failed  to  have  to  do  ?  It  seems  to 
me  a  heedless  notion,  our  common  one,  that  he  sat  like  a  bird 
on  the  bough  ;  and  sang  forth,  free  and  offhand,  never  know- 
ing the  troubles  of  other  men.  Not  so  ;  with  no  man  is  it  so. 
How  could  a  man  travel  forward  from  rustic  deer-poaching  to 
such  tragedy- writing,  and  not  fall-in  with  sorrows  by  the  way  ? 
Or,  still  better,  how  could  a  man  delineate  a  Hamlet,  a  Corio- 
lanus,  a  Macbeth,  so  many  suffering  heroic  hearts,  if  his  own 
heroic  heart  had  never  suffered  ? — And  now,  in  contrast  with 
all  this  observe  his  mirthfulness,  his  genuine  overflowing  love 
of  laughter !  You  would  say,  in  no  point  does  he  exaggerate 
but  only  in  laughter.  Fiery  objurgations,  words  that  pierce 
and  burn,  are  to  be  found  in  Shakespeare  ;  yet  he  is  always 
in  measure  here  ;  never  what  Johnson  would  remark  as  a 
specially  "good  hater."  But  his  laughter  seems  to  pour  from 
him  in  floods  ;  he  heaps  all  manner  of  ridiculous  nicknames 
on  the  butt  he  is  bantering,  tumbles  and  tosses  him  in  all 
sorts  of  horse-play  ;  you  would  say,  with  his  wrhole  heart 
laughs.  And  then,  if  not  always  the  finest,  it  is  always  a 
genial  laughter.  Not  at  mere  weakness,  at  misery  or  poverty  ; 
never.  No  man  who  can  laugh,  wh4t  we  call  laughing,  will 
laugh  at  these  things.  It  is  some  poor  character  only  desiring 
to  laugh,  and  have  the  credit  of  wit,  that  does  so.  Laughter 
means  sympathy;  good  laughter  is  not  "the  crackling  of 


106  HEROES  AND  HERO  •  WORSHIP. 

• 

thorns  under  the  pot."  Even  at  stupidity  and  pretension  this 
Shakespeare  does  not  laugh  otherwise  than  genially.  Dog- 
berry and  Verges  tickle  our  very  hearts  ;  and  we  dismiss  them 
covered  with  explosions  of  laughter :  but  we  like  the  poor 
fellows  only  the  better  for  our  laughing  ;  and  hope  they  will 
get  on  well  there,  and  continue  presidents  of  the  city-watch. 
Such  laughter,  like  sunshine  on  the  deep  sea,  is  very  beautiful 
to  me. 

We  have  no  room  to  speak  of  Shakespeare's  individual 
works  ;  though  perhaps  there  is  much  still  waiting  to  be  said 
on  that  head.  Had  we,  for  instance,  all  his  plays  reviewed  as 
"Hamlet,"  in  "Wilhelm  Meister,"  is  !  A  thing  which  might, 
one  day,  be  done.  August  Wilhelm  Schlegel  has  a  remark 
on  his  historical  plays,  "  Henry  Fifth  "  and  the  others,  which 
is  worth  remembering.  He  calls  them  a  kind  of  national  epic. 
Marlborough,  you  recollect,  said  he  knew  no  English  history 
but  what  he  had  learned  from  Shakespeare.  There  are  really, 
if  we  look  to  it,  few  as  memorable  histories.  The  great  sali- 
ent points  are  admirably  seized  !  all  rounds  itself  off,  into  a 
kind  of  rhythmic  coherence  ;  it  is,  as  Schlegel  says,  epic  ; — as 
indeed  all  delineation  by  a  great  thinker  will  be.  There  are 
right  beautiful  things  in  those  pieces,  which  indeed  together 
form  one  beautiful  thing.  That  battle  of  Agincourt  strikes 
me  as  one  of  the  most  perfect  things,  in  its  sort,  we  anywhere 
have  of  Shakespeare's.  The  description  of  the  two  hosts  :  the 
worn-out,  jaded  English  ;  the  dread  hour,  big  with  destiny, 
when  the  battle  shall  begin ;  and  then  that  deathless  valor 
"  Ye  good  yeomen,  whose  limbs  were  made  in  England  ! " 
There  is  a  noble  patriotism  in  it, — far  other  than  the  "  in- 
difference "  you  sometimes  hear  ascribed  to  Shakespeare.  A 
true  English  heart  breathes  calm  and  strong,  through  the 
whole  business  ;  not  boisterous,  protrusive  ;  all  the  better  for 
that.  There  is  a  sound  in  it  like  the  ring  of  steel.  This  man 
too  had  a  right  stroke  in  him,  had  it  come  to  that ! 

But  I  will  say,  of  Shakespeare's  works  generally,  that  we 
have  no  full  impress  of  him  there  ;  even  as  full  as  we  have  of 
many  men.  His  works  are  so  many  windows,  through  which 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  107 

we  see  a  glimpse  of  the  world  that  was  in  him.  All  his  works 
seem,  comparatively  speaking,  cursory,  imperfect,  written  un- 
der cramping  circumstances,  giving  only  here  and  there  a  note 
of  the  full  utterance  of  the  man.  Passages  there  are  that 
come  upon  you  like  splendor  out  of  heaven  ;  bursts  of  radi- 
ance, illuminating  the  very  heart  of  the  thing  :  you  say,  "  That 
is  true,  spoken  once  and  forever  ;  wheresoever  and  whenso- 
ever there  is  an  open  human  soul,  that  will  be  recognized  as 
true  ! "  Such  bursts,  however,  make  us  feel  that  the  sur- 
rounding matter  is  not  radiant ;  that  it  is,  in  part,  temporary, 
conventional.  Alas,  Shakespeare  had  to  write  for  the  Globe 
playhouse  :  his  great  soul  had  to  crush  itself,  as  it  could,  into 
that  and  no  other  mould.  It  was  with  him,  then,  as  it  is  with 
us  all  No  man  works  save  under  condition.  The  sculptor 
cannot  set  his  own  free  thought  before  us  ;  but  his  thought  as 
he  could  translate  it  into  the  stone  that  was  given,  with  the 
tools  that  were  given.  Disjecta  membra  are  all  that  we  find 
of  any  poet,  or  of  any  man. 

Whoever  looks  intelligently  at  this  Shakespeare  may  recog- 
nize that  he  too  was  a  prophet,  in  his  way  ;  of  an  insight  an- 
alogous to  the  prophetic,  though  he  took  it  up  in  another 
strain.  Nature  seemed  to  this  man  also  divine  ;  lojspeakable, 
deep  as  Tophet,  high  as  heaven  ;  "  We  are  such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  of !  "  That  scroll  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
which  few  read  with  ixnderstanding,  is  of  the  depth  of  any 
seer.  But  the  man  sang ;  did  not  preach,  except  musically. 
We  call  Dante  the  melodious  priest  of  middle-age  Catholi- 
cism. May  we  not  call  Shakespeare  the  still  more  melodious 
priest  of  a  true  Catholicism,  the  "  universal  church  "  of  the 
future  and  of  all  times?  No  narrow  superstition,  harsh 
asceticism,  intolerance,  fanatical  fierceness  or  perversion :  a 
revelation,  so  far  as  it  goes,  that  such  a  thousandfold  hidden 
beauty  and  divineness  dwells  in  all  nature  ;  which  let  all  men 
worship  as  they  can  !  We  may  say  without  offence,  that  there 
rises  a  kind  of  universal  psalm  out  of  this  Shakespeare  too ; 
not  unfit  to  make  itself  heard  among  the  still  more  sacred 
psalms.  Not  in  disharmony  with  these,  If  we  understood 


108  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

them,  but  in  harmony  ! — I  cannot  call  this  Shakespeare  a 
"skeptic,"  as  some  do;  his  indifference  to  the  creeds  and 
theological  quarrels  of  his  time  misleading  them.  No  :  neither 
unpatriotic,  though  he  says  little  about  his  patriotism ;  nor 
skeptic,  though  he  says  little  about  his  faith.  Such  "in- 
difference "  was  the  fruit  of  his  greatness  withal :  his  whole 
heart  was  in  his  own  grand  sphere  of  worship  (we  may  call  it 
such :)  these  other  controversies,  vitally  important  to  other 
men,  were  not  vital  to  him. 

But  call  it  worship,  call  it  what  you  will,  is  it  not  a  right 
glorious  thing,  and  set  of  things,  this  that  Shakespeare  has 
brought  us  ?  For  myself,  I  feel  that  there  is  actually  a  kind 
of  sacredness  in  the  fact  of  such  a  man  being  sent  into  this 
earth.  Is  he  not  an  eye  to  us  all ;  a  blessed  heaven-sent 
bringer  of  light? — And,  at  bottom,  was  it  not  perhaps  far 
better  that  this  Shakespeare,  everyway  an  unconscious  man, 
was  conscious  of  no  heavenly  message  ?  He  did  not  feel,  like 
Mohammed,  because  he  saw  into  those  internal  splendors, 
that  he  specially  was  the  "  Prophet  of  God  :  "  and  was  he  not 
greater  than  Mohammed  in  that  ?  Greater  ;  and,  also,  if  we 
compute  strictly,  as  we  did  in  Dante's  case,  more  successful. 
It  was  intrinsically  an  error  that  notion  of  Mohammed's,  of 
his  supreme  prophethood  ;  and  has  come  down  to  us  inex- 
tricably involved  in  error  to  this  day  ;  dragging  along  with  it 
such  a  coil  of  fables,  impurities,  intolerances,  as  makes  it  a 
questionable  step  for  me  here  and  now  to  say,  as  I  have  done, 
that  Mohammed  was  a  true  speaker  at  all,  and  not  rather  an 
ambitious  charlatan,  perversity  and  simulacrum ;  no  speaker, 
but  a  babbler !  Even  in  Arabia,  as  I  compute,  Mohammed 
wih1  have  exhausted  himself  and  become  obsolete,  while  this 
Shakespeare,  this  Dante  may  still  be  young  ; — while  this 
Shakespeare  may  still  pretend  to  be  a  priest  of  mankind,  of 
Arabia  as  of  other  places,  for  unlimited  periods  to  come  ! 

Compared  with  any  speaker  or  singer  one  knows,  even  with 
^Eschylus  or  Homer,  why  should  he  not,  for  veracity  and 
universality,  last  like  them  ?  He  is  sincere  as  they  ;  reaches 
deep  down  like  them,  to  the  universal  and  perennial.  But  as 
for  Mohammed,  I  think  it  had  been  better  for  him  not  to  be  so 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  109 

conscious !  Alas,  poor  Mohammed  ;  all  tliat  he  was  conscious 
of  was  a  mere  error  ;  a  futility  and  triviality, — as  indeed  such 
ever  is.  The  truly  great  in  him  too  was  the  unconscious  ;  that 
he  was  a  wild  Arab  lion  of  the  des.ert,  and  did  speak  out  with 
that  great  thunder-voice  of  his,  not  by  words  which  he  thought 
to  be  great,  but  by  actions,  by  feelings,  by  a  history  which 
were  great !  His  Koran  has  become  a  stupid  piece  of  prolix 
absurdity  ;  we  do  not  believe,  like  him,  that  God  wrote  that ! 
The  great  man  here  too,  as  always,  is  a  force  of  nature : 
whatsoever  is  truly  great  in  him  springs  up  from  the  inarticu- 
late deeps. 

Well :  this  is  our  poor  Warwickshire  peasant,  who  rose  to 
be  manager  of  a  playhouse,  so  that  he  could  live  without 
begging ;  whom  the  Earl  of  Southampton!  cast  some  kind 
glances  on  ;  whom  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  many  thanks  to  him, 
was  for  sending  to  the  treadmill !  We  did  not  account  him 
a  god  like  Odin,  while  he  dwelt  with  us  : — on  which  point 
there  were  much  to  be  said.  But  I  will  say  rather,  or  repeat : 
in  spite  of  the  sad  state  hero-worship  now  lies  in,  consider 
what  this  Shakespeare  has  actually  become  among  us.  Which 
Englishman  we  ever  made,  in  this  land  of  ours,  which  million 
of  Englishmen,  would  we  not  give-up  rather  than  the  Strat- 
ford peasant  ?  There  is  no  regiment  of  highest  dignitaries 
that  we  would  sell  him  for.  He  is  the  grandest  thing  we  have 
yet  done.  For  our  honor  among  foreign  nations,  as  an  orna- 
ment to  our  English  household,  what  item  is  there  that  we 
would  not  surrender  rather  than  him  ?  Consider  now,  if  they 
asked  us,  will  you  give-up  your  IndftLn  Empire  or  your  Shake- 
speare, you  English ;  never  have  had  any  Indian  Empire,  or 
never  have  had  any  Shakespeare?  Keally  it  were  a  grave 
question.  Official  persons  would  answer  doubtless  in  official 
language  ;  but  we,  for  our  part  too,  should  not  we  be  forced 
to  answer  :  Indian  Empire,  or  no  Indian  Empire  ;  we  cannot 
do  without  Shakespeare  !  Indian  Empire  will  go,  at  any  rate, 
some  day  ;  but  this  Shakespeare  does  not  go,  he  lasts  forever 
with  us  ;  we  cannot  give-up  our  Shakespeare ! 

Nay,  apart  from  spiritualities  ;  and  considering  him  merely 
as  a  real,  marketable,  tangibly- useful  possession.  England, 


110  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

before  long,  this  island  of  ours,  will  hold  but  a  small  fraction 
of  tbe  English  :  in  America,  m  New  Holland,  east  and  west  to 
the  very  antipodes,  there  will  be  a  Saxondom  covering  great 
spaces  of  the  globe.  And  now,  what  is  it  that  can  keep  all 
these  together  into  virtually  one  nation,  so  that  they  do  not 
fall-out  and  fight,  but  live  at  peace,  in  brother-like  intercourse) 
helping  one  another  ?  This  is  justly  regarded  as  the  greatest 
practical  problem,  the  thing  all  manner  of  sovereignties  and 
governments  are  here  to  accomplish :  what  is  it  that  will  ac- 
complish this?  Acts  of  parliament,  administrative  prime- 
ministers  cannot.  America  is  parted  from  us,  so  far  as  par- 
liament could  part  it.  Call  it  not  fantastic,  for  there  is  much 
reality  in  it :  here,  I  say,  is  an  English  king,  whom  no  time 
or  chance,  parliament  or  combination  of  parliaments,  can 
dethrone !  This  King  Shakespeare,  does  not  he  shine,  in 
crowned  sovereignty,  over  us  all,  as  the  noblest,  gentlest,  yet 
strongest  of  rallying  signs  ;  tndestructable  ;  really  more  valua- 
ble in  that  point  of  view  than  any  other  means  or  appliance 
whatsoever?  We  can  fancy  him  as  radiant  aloft  over  all  the 
nations  of  Englishmen,  a  thousand  3rears  hence.  From  Para- 
matta, from  New  York,  wheresoever,  under  what  sort  of  parish- 
constable  soever,  English  men  and  women  are,  they  will  say 
to  one  another  :  "Yes,  this  Shakespeare  is  ours ;  we  produced 
him,  we  speak  and  think  by  him  ;  we  are  of  one  blood  and 
kind  with  him."  The  most  common-sense  politician,  too,  if 
he  pleases,  may  think  of  that. 

Yes,  truly,  it  is  a  great  thing  for  a  nation  that  it  get  an  ar- 
ticulate voice  ;  that  it  produce  a  man  who  will  speak-forth 
melodiously  what  the  heart  of  it  means  !  Italy,  for  example, 
poor  Italy  lies  dismembered,  scattered  asunder,  not  appearing 
in  any  protocol  or  treaty  as  a  unity  at  all ;  yet  the  noble  Italy 
is  actually  one ;  Italy  produced  its  Dante  ;  Italy  can  speak  ! 
The  Czar  of  all  the  Kussias,  he  is  strong,  with  so  many  bayo- 
nets, Cossacks  and  cannons ;  and  does  a  great  feat  in  keep- 
ing such  a  tract  of  earth  politically  together  ;  but  he  cannot 
yet  speak.  Something  great  in  him,  but  it  is  a  dumb  great- 
ness. He  has  had  no  voice  of  genius,  to  be  heai'd  of  all  men 
and  times.  He  must  learn  to  speak.  He  is  a  great  dumb 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  Ill 

monster  hitherto.  His  cannons  and  Cossacks  will  all  have 
rusted  into  nonenity,  while  that  Dante's  voice  is  still  audible. 
The  Nation  that  has  a  Dante  is  bound  together  as  no  dumb 
Russia  can  be. — We  must  here  end  what  we  had  to  say  of  the 
hero-poet. 


LECTURE  IV. 

THE   HERO    AS    PEIEST.       LUTHER  ;    REFORMATION  :    KNOX  ;    PURITANISM 

[Friday,  loth  May,  1840.] 

Our  present  discourse  is  to  be  of  the  great  man  as  priest. 
We  have  repeatedly  endeavored  to  explain  that  all  sorts  of 
heroes  are  intrinsically  of  the  same  material ;  that  given  a 
great  soul,  open  to  the  divine  significance  of  life,  then  there 
is  given  a  man  fit  to  speak  of  this,  to  sing  of  this,  to  fight  and 
work  for  this,  in  a  great,  victorious,  enduring  manner  ;  there 
is  given  a  hero,  the  outward  shape  of  whom  will  depend  on 
the  time  and  the  environment  he  finds  himself  in.  The  priest 
too,  as  I  understand  it,  is  a  kind  of  prophet ;  in  him  too 
there  is  required  to  be  a  light  of  inspiration,  as  we  must  name 
it.  He  presides  over  the  wrorship  of  the  people  ;  is  the  uniter 
of  them  with  the  xmseen  holy.  He  is  the  spiritual  captain  of 
the  people  ;  as  the  prophet  is  their  spiritual  king  with  many 
captains :  he  guides  them  heavenward,  by  wise  guidance, 
through  this  earth  and  its  work.  The  ideal  of  him  is,  that  he 
too  be  what  we  can  call  a  voice  from  the  unseen  heaven  ;  in- 
terpreting, even  as  the  prophet  did,  and  in  a  more  familiar 
manner  unfolding  the  same  to  men.  The  unseen  heaven, — 
the  "  open  secret  of  the  universe," — which  so  few  have  an  eye 
for !  He  is  the  prophet  shorn  of  his  more  awful  splendor  ; 
burning  with  mild  equable  radiance,  as  the  enlightener  of 
daily  life.  This,  I  say,  is  the  ideal  of  a  priest.  So  in  old 
times  ;  so  in  these,  and  in  all  times.  One  knows  very  well 
that,  in  reducing  ideals  to  practice,  great  latitude  of  tolerance 
is  needful  ;  very  great.  But  a  priest  who  is  not  this  at  all, 
who  does  not  any  longer  aim  or  try  to  be  this,  is  a  character 
— of  whom  we  had  rather  not  speak  in  this  place. 


112  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

Luther  and  Knox  were  by  express  vocation  priests,  and  did 
faithfully  perform  that  function  in  its  common  sense.  Yet  it 
will  suit  us  better  here  to  consider  them  chiefly  in  their  histor- 
ical character,  rather  as  reformers  than  priests.  There  have 
been  other  priests  perhaps  equally  notable,  in  calmer  times, 
for  doing  faithfully  the  office  of  a  leader  of  worship  ;  bringing 
down,  by  faithful  heroism  in  that  kind,  a  light  from  heaven 
into  the  daily  life  of  their  people  ;  leading  them  forward,  as 
under  God's  guidance,  in  the  way  wherein  they  were  to  go. 
But  when  this  same  way  was  a  rough  one,  of  battle,  confusion 
and  danger,  the  spiritual  captain,  who  led  through  that,  be- 
comes, especially  to  us  who  live  under  the  fruit  of  his  leading, 
more  notable  than  any  other.  He  is  the  warfariug  and  battling 
priest ;  who  led  his  people,  not  to  quiet  faithful  labor  as  in 
smooth  times,  but  to  faithful  valorous  conflict,  in  times  all 
violent,  dismembered :  a  more  perilous  service,  and  a  more 
memorable  one,  be  it  higher  or  not.  These  two  men  we  will 
account  our  best  priests,  inasmuch  as  they  were  our  best  re- 
formers. Nay  I  may  ask,  is  not  every  true  reformer,  by  the 
nature  of  him,  a  priest  first  of  all  ?  He  appeals  to  heaven's 
invisible  justice  against  earth's  visible  force  ;  knows  that  it, 
the  invisible,  is  strong  and  alone  strong.  He  is  a  believer  in 
the  divine  truth  of  things  ;  a  seer,  seeing  through  the  shows 
of  things ;  a  worshipper,  in  one  way  or  the  other,  of  the 
divine  truth  of  things  ;  a  priest,  that  is.  If  he  be  not 
first  a  priest,  he  will  never  be  good  for  much  as  a  reformer. 

Thus  then,  as  we  have  seen  great  men,  in  various  situations, 
building  up  religions,  heroic  forms  of  human  existence  in  this 
world,  theories  of  life  worthy  to  be  sung  by  a  Dante,  practices 
of  life  by  a  Shakespeare, — we  are  now  to  see  the  reverse  proc- 
ess ;  which  also  is  necessary,  which  also  may  be  carried-on  in 
the  heroic  manner.  Curious  how  this  should  be  necessary ; 
yet  necessary  it  is.  The  mild  shining  of  the  poet's  light  has 
to  give  place  to  the  fierce  lightning  of  the  reformer  :  unfortu- 
nately the  reformer  too  is  a  personage  that  cannot  fail  in 
history  !  The  poet  indeed,  with  his  mildness,  what  is  he  but 
the  product  and  ultimate  adjustment  of  reform,  or  prophecy, 
with  its  fierceness?  No  wild  Saint  Dominies  and  Theba'id 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  113 

Eremites,  there  had  been  no  melodious  Dante  ;  rough  prac- 
tical endeavor,  Scandinavian  and  other,  from  Odin  to  "Walter 
Raleigh,  from  Ulfila  to  Cranmer,  enable  Shakespeare  to  speak. 
Nay  the  finished  poet,  I  remark  sometimes,  is  a  symptom  that 
his  epoch  itself  has  reached  perfection  and  is  finished :  that 
before  long  there  will  be  a  new  epoch,  new  reformers  needed. 

Doubtless  it  were  finer,  could  we  go  along  always  in  the 
way  of  music  ;  be  tamed  and  taught  by  our  poets,  as  the  rude 
creatures,  were  by  their  Orpheus  of  old.  Or  failing  this 
rhythmic  musical  way,  how  good  were  it  could  we  get  so  much 
as  into  the  equable  way  ;  I  mean,  if  peaceable  priests,  reforming 
from  day  to  day,  would  always  suffice  us  !  But  it  is  not  so  ; 
even  this  latter  has  not  yet  been  realized.  Alas,  the  battling 
reformer  too  is,  from  time  to  time,  a  needful  and  inevitable 
phenomenon.  Obstructions  are  never  wanting,  the  very 
things  that  were  once  indispensable  furtherances  become  ob- 
structions ;  and  need  to  be  shaken  off,  and  left  behind  us, — a 
business  often  of  enormous  difficulty.  It  is  notable  enough, 
surely,  how  a  theorem  or  spiritual  representation,  so  we  may 
call  it,  which  once  took-in  the  whole  universe,  and  was  com- 
pletely satisfactory  in  all  parts  of  it  to  the  highly-discursive 
acute  intellect  of  Dante,  one  of  the  greatest  in  the  world, — 
had  in  the  course  of  another  century  become  dubitable  to 
common  intellects ;  become  deniable  ;  and  is  now,  to  every 
one  of  us,  flatly  incredible,  obsolete  as  Odin's  theorem  !  To 
Dante,  human  existence,  and  God's  ways  with  men,  were  all 
Avell  represented  by  those  Malebolges,  Purgatorios ;  to  Luther 
not  welL  How  was  this  ?  Why  could  not  Dante's  Catholicism 
continue ;  but  Luther's  Protestantism  must  needs  follow  ? 
Alas,  nothing  will  continue. 

I  do  not  make  much  of  "progress  of  the  species,"  as  handled 
in  these  times  of  ours  ;  nor  do  I  think  you  would  care  to  hear 
much  about  it.  The  talk  on  that  subject  is  too  often  of  the 
most  extravagant,  confused  sort.  Yet  I  may  say,  the  fact  itself 
seems  certain  enough  ;  nay  we  can  trace-out  the  inevitable 
necessity  of  it  in  the  nature  of  things.  Every  man,  as  I  have 
stated  somewhere,  is  not  only  a  learner  but  a  doer  :  he  learns 
with  the  mind  given  him  what  has  been  ;  but  with  the  same 
8 


114:  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

mind  he  discovers  farther,  lie  invents  and  devises  somewhat  of 
his  own.  Absolutely  without  originality  there  is  no  man. 
No  man  whatever  believes,  or  can  believe,  exactty  what  his 
grandfather  believed ;  he  enlarges  somewhat,  by  fresh  discovery, 
his  view  of  the  universe  and  consequently  his  theorem  of  the 
universe, — which  is  an  infinite  universe,  and  can  never  be  em- 
braced wholly  or  finally  by  any  view  or  theorem,  in  any  con- 
ceivable enlargement ;  he  enlarges  somewhat,  I  say  ;  finds 
somewhat  that  was  credible  to  his  grandfather,  incredible  to 
him,  false  to  him,  inconsistent  with  some  new  thing  he  has 
discovered  or  observed.  It  is  the  history  of  every  man  ;  and 
in  the  history  of  mankind  we  see  it  summed-up  into  great  his- 
torical amounts, — revolutions,  new  epochs.  Dante's  Mountain 
of  Purgatory  does  not  stand  "  in  the  ocean  of  the  other  hemi- 
sphere," when  Columbus  has  once  sailed  thither !  Men  find  no 
such  thing  extant  in  the  other  hemisphere.  It  is  not  there. 
It  must  cease  to  be  believed  to  be  there.  So  with  all  beliefs 
whatsoever  in  this  world, — all  systems  of  belief,  and  systems 
of  practice  that  spring  from  these. 

If  we  add  now  the  melancholy  fact,  that  when  belief  waxes 
uncertain,  practice  too  becomes  unsound,  and  errors,  in- 
justices and  miseries  everywhere  more  and  more  prevail,  we 
shall  see  material  enough  for  revolution.  At  all  turns,  a  man 
who  will  do  faithfully,  needs  to  believe  firmly.  If  he  have  to 
ask  at  every  turn  the  world's  suffrage  ;  if  he  cannot  dispense 
with  the  world's  suffrage,  and  make  his  own  suffrage  serve,  he 
is  a  poor  eye-servant ;  the  work  committed  to  him  will  be  mis- 
done.  Every  such  man  is  a  daily  contributor  to  the  inevitable 
downfall.  Whatsoever  work  he  does,  dishonestly,  with  an  eye 
to  the  outward  look  of  it,  is  a  new  offence,  parent  of  new 
misery  to  somebody  or  other.  Offences  accumulate  till  they 
become  insupportable  ;  and  are  then  violently  burst  through, 
cleared  off  as  by  explosion.  Dante's  sublime  Catholicism,  in- 
credible now  in  theory,  and  defaced  still  worse  by  faithless, 
doubting  and  dishonest  practice,  has  to  be  torn  asunder  by  a 
Luther  ;  Snakespeare's  noble  feudalism,  as  beautiful  as  it  once 
looked  and  was,  has  to  end  in  a  French  revolution.  The  ac- 
cumulation of  offences  is,  as  we  say,  too  literally  exploded. 


TEE  IIERO  AS  PRIEST.  115 

blasted  asunder  volcanically ;  and  there  are  long  troublous 
periods,  before  matters  come  to  a  settlement  again. 

Surely  it  were  mournful  enough  to  look  only  at  this  face  of 
the  matter,  and  find  in  all  human  opinions  and  arrangements 
merely  the  fact  that  they  were  uncertain,  temporary,  subject 
to  the  law  of  death  !  At  bottom,  it  is  not  so  :  all  death,  here 
too  we  find,  is  but  of  the  body,  not  of  the  essence  or  soul ;  all 
destruction,  by  violent  revolution  or  howsoever  it  be,  is  but 
new  creation  on  a  wider  scale.  Odinism  was  valor ;  Chris- 
tianism  was  humility,  a  nobler  kind  of  valor.  No  thought 
that  ever  dwelt  honestly  as  true  in  the  heart  of  man  but  was 
an  honest  insight  into  God's  truth  on  man's  part,  and  has  an 
essential  truth  in  it  which  endures  through  all  changes,  an 
everlasting  possession  for  us  all.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
what  a  melancholy  notion  is  that,  which  has  to  represent  all 
men,  in  all  countries  and  times  except  our  own,  as  having 
spent  their  life  in  blind  condemnable  error,  mere  lost  Pagans, 
Scandinavians,  Mohammedans,  only  that  we  might  have  the 
time  ultimate  knowledge  !  All  generations  of  men  were  lost 
and  wrong,  only  that  this  present  little  section  of  a  genera- 
tion might  be  saved  and  right.  They  all  marched  forward 
there,  all  generations  since  the  beginning  of  the  world,  like 
the  Russian  soldiers  into  the  ditch  of  Schweidnitz  Fort,  only 
to  fill-up  the  ditch  with  their  dead  bodies,  that  we  might 
march-over  and  take  the  place  !  It  is  an  incredible  hy- 
pothesis. 

Such  incredible  hypothesis  we  have  seen  maintained  with 
fierce  emphasis  ;  and  this  or  the  other  poor  individual  man, 
with  his  sect  of  individual  men,  marching  as  over  the  dead 
bodies  of  all  men,  towards  sure  victory  :  but  when  he  too, 
with  his  hypothesis  and  ultimate  infallible  credo,  sank  into 
the  ditch,  and  became  a  dead  body,  what  was  to  be  said  ? — 
Withal,  it  is  an  important  fact  in  the  nature  of  man,  that  he 
tends  to  reckon  his  own  insight  as  final,  and  goes  upon  it  as 
such.  He  will  always  do  it ;  I  suppose,  in  one  or  the  other 
way :  but  it  must  be  in  some  wider,  wiser  way  than  this.  Are 
not  all  true  men  that  live,  or  that  ever  lived,  soldiers  of 
the  same  army,  enlisted,  under  heaven's  captaincy,  to  do  bat- 


116  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

tie  against  the  same  enemy,  the  empire  of  darkness  and  wrong? 
"Why  should  we  misknow  one  another,  fight  not  against  the 
enemy  but  against  ourselves,  from  mere  difference  of  uni- 
form ?  All  uniforms  shall  be  good,  so  they  hold  in  them  true 
valiant  men.  All  fashions  of  arms,  the  Arab  turban  and  swift 
scimetar,  Thor's  strong  hammer  smiting  down  Jotuns,  shall 
be  welcome.  Luther's  battle-voice,  Dante's  march-melody, 
all  genuine  things  are  with  us,  not  against  us.  We  are  all 
under  one  captain,  soldiers  of  the  same  host. — Let  us  now 
look  a  little  at  this  Luther's  fighting  ;  what  kind  of  battle  it 
was,  and  how  he  comported  himself  in  it.  Luther  too  was  of 
our  spiritual  heroes  ;  a  prophet  to  his  country  and  time. 

As  introductory  to  the  whole,  a  remark  about  idolatry  will 
perhaps  be  in  place  here.  One  of  Mohammed's  characteris- 
tics, which  indeed  belongs  to  ah1  prophets,  is  unlimited  im- 
placable zeal  against  idolatry.  It  is  the  grand  theme  of 
prophets :  idolatry,  the  worshiping  of  dead  idols  as  the  di- 
vinity, is  a  thing  they  cannot  away-with,  but  have  to  de- 
nounce continually,  and  brand  with  inexpiable  reprobation ; 
it  is  the  chief  of  all  the  sins  they  see  done  under  the  sun. 
This  is  worth  noting.  We  will  not  enter  here  into  the  theo- 
logical question  about  idolatry.  Idol  is  eidolon,  a  thing  seen, 
a  symbol.  It  is  not  God,  but  a  symbol  of  God  ;  and  perhaps 
one  may  question  whether  any  the  most  benighted  mortal 
ever  took  it  for  more  than  a  symbol.  I  fancy,  he  did  not 
think  that  the  poor  image  his  own  hands  had  made  was  God  ; 
but  that  God  was  emblemed  by  it ;  that  God  was  in  it  some 
way  or  other.  And  now  in  this  sense,  one  may  ask,  is  not  all 
worship  whatsoever  a  worship  by  symbols,  by  eidola,  or  things 
seen  ?  Whether  seen,  rendered  visible  as  an  image  or  picture 
to  the  bodily  eye  ;  or  visible  only  to  the  inward  eye,  to  the 
imagination,  to  the  intellect ;  this  makes  a  superficial,  but  no 
substantial  difference.  It  is  still  a  thing  seen,  significant  of 
godhead ;  an  idol.  The  most  rigorous  Puritan  has  his  con- 
fession of  faith,  and  intellectual  representation  of  divine 
things,  and  worships  thereby  ;  thereby  is  worship  first  made 
possible  for  him.  All  creeds,  liturgies,  religious  forms,  con- 


TEE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  117 

ceptions  that  fitly  invest  religious  feelings,  are  in  this  sense 
eidola,  things  seen.  All  worship  whatsoever  must  proceed  by 
symbols,  by  idols : — we  may  say,  all  idolatry  is  comparative, 
and  the  worst  idolatry  is  only  more  idolatrous. 

Where,  then,  lies  the  evil  of  it  ?  Some  fatal  evil  must  lie 
in  it,  or  earnest  prophetic  men  would  not  on  all  hands  so  rep- 
robate it.  Why  is  idolatry  so  hateful  to  prophets  ?  It  seems 
to  me  as  if,  in  the  worship  of  those  poor  wooden  symbols,  the 
thing  that  had  chiefly  provoked  the  prophet,  and  filled  his  in- 
most soul  with  indignation  and  aversion,  was  not  exactly  what 
suggested  itself  to  his  own  thought,  and  came  out  of  him  in 
words  to  others,  as  the  thing.  The  rudest  heathen  that  wor- 
shiped Canopus,  or  the  Caabah  black-stone,  he,  as  we  saw, 
was  superior  to  the  horse  that  worshiped  nothing  at  all ! 
Nay  there  was  a  kind  of  lasting  merit  in  that  poor  act  of  his  ; 
analogous  to  what  is  still  meritorious  in  poets  ;  recognition  of 
a  certain  endless  divine  beauty  and  significance  in  stars  and 
all  natural  objects  whatsoever.  Why  should  the  prophet  so 
mercilessly  condemn  him  ?  The  poorest  mortal  worshiping 
his  Fetish,  while  his  heart  is  full  of  it,  may  be  an  object  of 
pity,  of  contempt  and  avoidance,  if  you  will ;  but  cannot 
surely  be  an  object  of  hatred.  Let  his  heart  be  honestly  full 
of  it,  the  whole  space  of  his  dark  narrow  mind  illuminated 
thereby  ;  in  one  word,  let  him  entirely  believe  in  his  Fetish, — 
it  will  then  be,  I  should  say,  if  not  well  with  him,  yet  as  well 
as  it  can  readily  be  made  to  be,  and  you  will  leave  him  alone, 
unmolested  there. 

But  here  enters  the  fatal  circumstance  of  idolatry,  that,  in 
the  era  of  the  prophets,  no  man's  mind  is  any  longer  honestly 
filled  with  his  idol  or  symbol.  Before  the  prophet  can  arise 
who,  seeing  through  it,  knows  it  to  be  mere  wood,  many  men 
must  have  begun  dimly  to  doubt  that  it  was  little  more.  Con- 
demnable  idolatry  is  insincere  idolatry.  Doubt  has  eaten-out 
the  heart  of  it :  a  human  soul  is  seen  clinging  spasmodically 
to  an  Ark  of  the  Covenant,' which  it  half -feels  now  to  have  be- 
come a  phantasm.  This  is  one  of  the  balefulest  sights.  Souls 
are  no  longer  filled  with  their  Fetish  ;  but  only  pretend  to  be 
filled,  and  would  fain  make  themselves  feel  that  they  are  filled. 


118  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

"  You  do  not  believe,"  said  Coleridge  ;  "you  only  believe  that 
you  believe."  It  is  the  final  scene  in  all  kinds  of  worship  and 
symbolism  ;  the  sure  symptom  that  death  is  now  nigh.  It  is 
equivalent  to  what  we  call  formulism,  and  worship  of  formu- 
las, in  these  days  of  oiirs.  No  more  immortal  act  can  be  done 
by  a  human  creature  ;  for  it  is  the  beginning  of  all  immoral- 
ity, or  rather  it  is  the  impossibility  henceforth  of  any  morality 
whatsoever  :  the  innermost  moral  soul  is  paralyzed  thereby, 
cast  into  fatal  magnetic  sleep  !  Men  are  no  longer  sincere 
men.  I  do  not  wonder  that  the  earnest  man  denounces  this, 
brands  it,  prosecutes  it  with  inextinguishable  aversion.  He 
and  it,  all  good  and  it,  are  at  death-feud.  Blamable  idolatry 
is  cant,  and  even  what  one  may  call  sincere-cant.  Sincere- 
cant  :  that  is  worth  thinking  of  !  Every  sort  of  worship  ends 
with  this  phasis. 

I  find  Luther  to  have  been  a  breaker  of  idols,  no  less  than 
any  other  prophet.  The  wooden  gods  of  the  Koreish,  made 
of  timber  and  bees-wax,  were  not  more  hateful  to  Mohammed 
than  Tetzel's  Pardon  of  Sins,  made  of  sheepskin  and  ink, 
were  to  Luther.  It  is  the  property  of  every  hero,  in  every 
time,  in  every  place  and  situation,  that  he  come  back  to  re- 
ality ;  that  he  stand  upon  things,  and  not  shows  of  things. 
According  as  he  loves,  and  venerates,  articulately  or  with  deep 
speechless  thought,  the  awful  realities  of  things,  so  will  the 
hollow  shows  of  things,  however  regular,  decorous,  accredit- 
ed by  Koreishes  or  conclaves,  be  intolerable  and  detestable 
to  him.  Protestantism  too  is  the  work  of  a  prophet :  the 
prophet-work  of  that  sixteenth  century.  The  first  stroke  of 
honest  demolition  to  an  ancient  thing  grown  false  and  idola- 
trous ;  preparatory  afar  off  to  a  new  thing,  which  shall  be 
true,  and  authentically  divine ! — 

At  first  view  it  might  seem  as  if  Protestantism  were  entirely 
destructive  to  this  that  we  call  hero-worship,  and  represent  as 
the  basis  of  all  possible  good,  religious  or  social,  for  mankind. 
One  often  heai'S  it  said  that  Protestantism  introduced  a  new 
era,  radically  different  from  any  the  world  had  ever  seen  be- 
fore :  the  era  of  "  private  judgment,"  as  they  call  it.  By  this 
revolt  against  the  pope,  every  man  became  his  own  pope  ; 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  119 

and  learnt,  among  other  things,  that  he  must  never  trust  any 
pope,  or  spiritual  hero-captain,  any  more  !  Whereby,  is  not 
spiritual  union,  ah1  hierarchy  and  subordination  among  men, 
henceforth  an  impossibility?  So  we  hear  it  said. — Now  I 
need  not  deny  that  Protestantism  was  a  revolt  against  spiritual 
sovereignties,  popes  and  much  else.  Nay  I  will  grant  that 
English  Puritanism,  revolt  against  earthly  sovereignties,  was 
the  second  act  of  it ;  that  the  enormous  French  Revolution 
itself  was  the  third  act,  whereby  all  sovereignties  earthly  and 
spiritual  were,  as  might  seem,  abolished  or  made  sure  of  abo- 
lition. Protestantism  is  the  grand  root  from  which  our  whole 
subsequent  European  History  branches  out.  For  the  spiritual 
will  always  body  itself  forth  in  the  temporal  history  of  men  ; 
the  spiritual  is  the  beginning  of  the  temporal.  And  now, 
sure  enough,  the  cry  is  everywhere  for  liberty  and  equality, 
independence  and  so  forth  ;  instead  of  kings,  ballot-boxes  and 
electoral  suffrages  :  it  seems  made  out  that  any  hero-sover- 
eign, or  loyal  obedience  of  men  to  a  man,  in  things  temporal 
or  things  spiritual,  has  passed  away  forever  from  the  world. 
I  should  despair  of  the  world  altogether,  if  so.  One  of  my 
deepest  convictions  is,  that  it  is  not  so.  "Without  sovereigns, 
true  sovereigns,  temporal  and  spiritual,  I  see  nothing  possible 
but  an  anarchy  ;  the  hatefulest  of  things.  But  I  find  Protes- 
tantism, whatever  anarchic  democracy  it  have  produced,  to  be 
the  beginning  of  new  genuine  sovereignty  and  order.  I  find 
it  to  be  a  revolt  against  false  sovereigns  ;  the  painful  but  in- 
dispensable first  preparative  for  true  sovereigns  getting  place 
among  us  !  This  is  worth  explaining  a  little. 

Let  us  remark,  therefore,  in  the  first  place,  that  this  of  "  pri- 
vate judgment "  is,  at  bottom,  not  a  new  thing  in  the  world, 
but  only  new  at  that  epoch  of  the  world.  There  is  nothing 
geuerically  new  or  peculiar  in  the  reformation  ;  it  was  a  re- 
turn to  truth  and  reality  in  opposition  to  falsehood  and  sem- 
blance, as  all  kinds  of  improvement  and  genuine  teaching  are 
and  have  been.  Liberty  of  private  judgment,  if  we  will  con- 
sider it,  must  at  all  times  have  existed  in  the  world.  Dante 
had  not  put-out  his  eyes,  or  tied  shackles  on  himself  ;  he  was 
at  home  in  that  Catholicism  of  his,  a  free-seeing  soul  in  it, — • 


120  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

if  many  a  poor  Hogstraten,  Tetzel  and  Dr.  Eck  Lad  now  be- 
come slaves  in  it.  Liberty  of  judgment  ?  No  iron  chain,  or 
outward  force  of  any  kind,  could  ever  compel  the  soul  of  a 
man  to  believe  or  to  disbelieve  :  it  is  his  own  indefeasible 
light,  that  judgment  of  his  ;  he  will  reign,  and  believe  there, 
by  the  grace  of  God  alone !  The  sorriest  sophistical  Bellar- 
mine,  preaching  sightless  faith  and  passive  obedience,  must 
first,  by  some  kind  of  conviction,  have  abdicated  his  right  to 
be  convinced.  His  "  private  judgment "  indicated  that,  as 
the  advisablest  step  he  could  take.  The  right  of  private  judg- 
ment will  subsist,  in  full  force,  wherever  true  men  subsist. 
A  true  man  believes  with  his  whole  judgment,  with  all  the  illu- 
mination and  discernment  that  is  in  him,  and  has  always  so 
believed.  A  false  man,  only  struggling  to  "believe  that  he 
believes,"  will  naturally  manage  it  in  some  other  way.  Prot- 
estantism said  to  this  latter,  Woe !  and  to  the  former,  Well 
done  !  At  bottom,  it  was  no  new  saying  ;  it  was  a  return  to 
all  old  sayings  that  ever  had  been  said.  Be  genuine,  be  sin- 
cere :  that  was,  once  more,  the  meaning  of  it.  Mohammed 
believed  with  his  whole  mind  ;  Odin  with  his  whole  mind, — 
he  and  all  true  followers  of  Odinism.  They,  by  their  private 
judgment,  had  "judged" — so. 

And  now  I  venture  to  assert,  that  the  exercise  of  private 
judgment,  faithfully  gone  about,  does  by  no  means  necessarily 
end  in  selfish  independence,  isolation  ;  but  rather  ends  neces- 
sarily in  the  opposite  of  that.  It  is  not  honest  inquiry  that 
makes  anarchy  ;  but  it  is  error,  insincerity,  half-belief  and  un- 
truth that  make  it.  A  man  protesting  against  error  is  on  the 
way  towards  uniting  himself  with  all  men  that  believe  in 
truth.  There  is  no  communion  possible  among  men  who  be- 
lieve only  in  hearsays.  The  heart  of  each  is  lying  dead  ;  has 
no  power  of  sympathy  even  with  things, — or  he  would  believe 
them  and  not  hearsays.  No  sympathy  even  with  things  ;  how 
much  less  with  his  fellow-men  !  He  cannot  unite  with  men  ; 
he  is  an  anarchic  man.  Only  in  a  world  of  sincere  men  is 
unity  possible  ;  and  there,  in  the  long  run,  it  is  as  good  as 
certain. 

For  observe  one  thing,  a  thing  too  often  left  out  of  view,  or 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  121 

rather  altogether  lost  sight  of,  in  this  controversy  :  that  it  is 
not  necessary  a  man  should  himself  have  discovered  the  truth 
he  is  to  believe  in,  and  never  so  sincerely  to  believe  in.  A 
great  man,  we  said,  was  always  sincere,  as  the  first  condition 
of  him.  But  a  man  need  not  be  great  in  order  to  be  sincere  ; 
that  is  not  the  necessity  of  nature  and  all  time,  but  only  of 
certain  corrupt  unfortunate  epochs  of  time.  A  man  can  be- 
lieve, and  make  his  own,  in  the  most  genuine  way,  what  he 
has  received  from  another  ; — and  with  boundless  gratitude  to 
that  other !  The  merit  of  originality  is  not  novelty ;  it  is 
sincerity.  The  believing  man  is  the  original  man  ;  whatsoever 
he  believes,  he  believes  it  for  himself,  not  for  another.  Every 
son  of  Adam  can  become  a  sincere  man,  an  original  man,  in 
this  sense  ;  no  mortal  is  doomed  to  be  an  insincere  man. 
Whole  ages,  what  we  call  ages  of  faith,  are  original ;  all  men 
in  them,  or  the  most  of  men  in  them,  sincere.  These  are  the 
great  and  fruitful  ages  :  every  worker,  in  aE.  spheres,  is  a 
worker  not  on  semblance  but  on  substance  ;  every  work  issues 
in  a  result :  the  general  sum  of  such  work  is  great ;  for  all 
of  it,  as  genuine,  tends  towards  one  goal ;  all  of  it  is  additive, 
none  of  it  subtractive.  There  is  true  union,  true  kingship, 
loyalty,  all  true  and  blessed  things,  so  far  as  the  poor  earth 
can  produce  blessedness  for  men. 

Hero-worship  ?  Ah  me,  that  a  man  be  self-subsistent,  orig- 
inal, true,  or  what  we  call  it,  is  surely  the  farthest  in  the 
world  from  indisposing  him  to  reverence  and  believe  other 
men's  truth  !  It  only  disposes,  necessitates  and  invincibly 
compels  him  to  disbelieve  other  men's  dead  formulas,  hear- 
says and  untruths.  A  man  embraces  truth  with  his  eyes  open, 
and  because  his  eyes  are  open  :  does  he  need  to  shut  them  be- 
fore he  can  love  his  teacher  of  truth  ?  He  alone  can  love, 
with  a  right  gratitude  and  genuine  loyalty  of  soul,  the  hero- 
teacher  who  has  delivered  him  out  of  darkness  into  light.  Is 
not  such  a  one  a  true  hero  and  serpent-queller  ;  worthy  of  all 
reverence !  The  black  monster,  falsehood,  our  one  enemy 
in  this  world,  lies  prostrate  by  his  valor  ;  it  was  he  that  con- 
quered the  world  for  us  ! — See,  accordingly,  was  not  Luther 
himself  reverenced  as  a  true  pope,  or  spiritual  father,  being 


122  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

verily  such  ?  Napoleon,  from  amid  boundless  revolt  of  Sans- 
culottism,  became  a  king.  Hero- worship  never  dies,  nor  can 
die.  Loyalty  and  sovereignty  are  everlasting  in  the  world  : — 
and  there  is  this  in  them,  that  they  are  grounded  not  on  gar- 
nitures and  semblances,  but  on  realities  and  sincerities.  Not 
by  shutting  your  eyes,  your  "  private  judgment ;  "  no,  but  by 
opening  them,  and  by  having  something  to  see  !  Luther's 
message  was  deposition  and  abolition  to  all  false  popes  and 
potentates,  but  life  and  strength,  though  afar  off,  to  new 
genuine  ones. 

All  this  of  liberty  and  equality,  electoral  suffrages,  inde- 
pendence and  so  forth,  we  will  take,  therefore,  to  be  a  tem- 
porary phenomenon,  by  no  means  a  final  one.  Though  likely 
to  last  a  long  time,  with  sad  enough  embroilments  for  us  all, 
we  must  welcome  it,  as  the  penalty  of  sins  that  are  past,  the 
pledge  of  inestimable  benefits  that  are  coming.  In  all  ways, 
it  behoved  men  to  quit  simulacra  and  return  to  fact ;  cost 
what  it  might,  that  did  behove  to  be  done.  With  spurious 
popes,  and  believers  having  no  private  judgment, — quacks 
pretending  to  command  over  dupes, — what  can  you  do? 
Misery  and  mischief  only.  You  cannot  make  an  association 
out  of  insincere  men  ;  you  cannot  build  an  edifice  except  by 
plummet  and  level, — at  rig  /^-angles  to  one  another  !  In  all 
this  wild  revolutionary  work,  from  Protestantism  downwards, 
I  see  the  blessedest  result  preparing  itself :  not  abolition  of 
Hero-worship,  but  rather  what  I  would  call  a  whole  world  of 
heroes.  If  hero  mean  sincere  man,  why  may  not  every  one  of 
us  be  a  hero  ?  A  world  all  sincere,  a  believing  world  :  the 
like  has  been  ;  the  like  will  again  be, — cannot  help  being. 
That  were  the  right  sort  of  worshipers  for  heroes :  never  could 
the  truly  better  be  so  reverenced  as  where  all  were  true  and 
good ! — But  we  must  hasten  to  Luther  and  his  life. 

Luther's  birthplace  was  Eisleben  in  Saxony  ;  he  came  into 
the  world  there  on  the  10th  of  November,  1483.  It  was  an 
accident  that  gave  this  honor  to  Eisleben.  His  parents,  poor 
mine-laborers  in  a  village  of  that  region,  named  Mohra,  had 
gone  to  the  Eisleben  winter-fair :  in  the  tumult  of  this  scene  the 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  123 

Frau  Luther  was  taken  with  travail,  found  refuge  in  some  poor 
house  there,  and  the  boy  she  bore  was  named  MARTIN  LUTHER. 
Strange  enough  to  reflect  upon  it.  This  poor  Frau  Luther, 
she  had  gone  with  her  husband  to  make  her  small  merchan- 
clizings  ;  perhaps  to  sell  the  lock  of  yarn  she  had  been  spin- 
ning, to  buy  the  small  winter-necessaries  for  her  narrow  hut 
or  household  ;  in  the  whole  world,  that  day,  there  was  not  a 
more  entirely  unimportant-looking  pair  of  people  than  this 
miner  and  his  wife.  And  yet  what  were  all  emperors,  popes 
and  potentates,  in  comparison?  There  was  born  here,  once 
more,  a  mighty  man  ;  whose  light  was  to  flame  as  the  beacon 
over  long  centuries  and  epochs  of  the  world  ;  the  whole  world 
and  its  history  was  waiting  for  this  man.  It  is  strange,  it  is 
great.  It  leads  us  back  to  another  birth-hour,  in  a  still 
meaner  environment,  eighteen  hundred  years  ago, — of  which 
it  is  fit  that  we  say  nothing,  that  we  think  only  in  silence  ; 
for  what  words  are  there  !  The  age  of  miracles  past  ?  The 
age  of  miracles  is  forever  here  ! — 

I  find  it  altogether  suitable  to  Luther's  function  in  this 
earth,  and  doubtless  wisely  ordered  to  that  end  by  the  Provi- 
dence presiding  over  him  and  us  and  all  things,  that  he  was 
born  poor,  and  brought-up  poor,  one  of  the  poorest  of  men. 
He  had  to  beg,  as  the  school-children  in  those  times  did ;  sing- 
ing for  alms  and  bread  from  door  to  door.  Hardship,  rigorous 
necessity  was  the  poor  boy's  companion  ;  no  man  nor  no  thing 
would  put-on  a  false  face  to  flatter  Martin  Luther.  Among 
things,  not  among  the  shows  of  things,  had  he  to  grow.  A 
boy  of  rude  figure,  yet  with  weak  health,  with  his  large  greedy 
soul,  full  of  all  faculty  and  sensibility,  he  suffered  greatly.  But 
it  was  his  task  to  get  acquainted  with  realities,  and  keep  ac- 
quainted with  them,  at  whatever  cost :  his  task  was  to  bring 
the  whole  world  back  to  reality,  for  it  had  dwelt  too  long  with 
semblance  !  A  youth  nursed-up  in  wintry  whirlwinds,  in 
desolate  darkness  and  difficulty,  that  he  may  step-forth  at  last 
from  his  stormy  Scandinavia,  strong  as  a  true  man,  as  a  god  : 
a  Christian  Odin, — a  right  Thor  once  more  with  his  thunder- 
hammer,  to  smite  asunder  ugly  enough  JiJtuns  and  giant-mon- 
sters ! 


124  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

Perhaps  the  turning  incident  of  his  life,  we  may  fancy,  was 
that  death  of  his  friend  Alexis,  by  lightning,  at  the  gate  of 
Erfurt.  Luther  had  struggled-up  through  boyhood,  better 
and  worse  ;  displaying,  in  spite  of  all  hindrances,  the  largest 
intellect,  eager  to  learn  ;  his  father  judging  doubtless  that 
he  might  promote  himself  in  the  world,  set  him  upon  the 
study  of  law.  This  was  the  path  to  rise  ;  Luther,  with  little 
will  in  it  either  Avay,  had  consented  :  he  was  now  nineteen 
years  of  age.  Alexis  and  he  had  been  to  see  the  old  Luther 
people  at  Mansfeldt ;  were  got  back  again  near  Erfurt,  when 
a  thunderstorm  came  on  ;  the  bolt  struck  Alexis,  he  fell  dead 
at  Luther's  feet.  What  is  this  life  of  ours  ? — gone  in  a  mo- 
ment, burnt-up  like  a  scroll,  into  the  blank  eternity  !  What 
are  all  earthly  preferments,  chancellorships,  kingships  ?  They 
lie  shrunk  together — there  !  The  earth  has  opened  on  them  ; 
in  a  moment  they  are  not,  and  eternity  is.  Luther,  struck  to 
the  heart,  determined  to  devote  himself  to  God  and  God's 
service  alone.  In  spite  of  all  dissuasions  from  his  father  and 
others,  he  became  a  monk  in  the  Augustine  Convent  at  Erfurt. 

This  was  probably  the  first  light-point  in  the  history  of 
Luther,  his  purer  will  now  first  decisively  uttering  itself ;  but, 
for  the  present,  it  was  still  as  one  light-point  in  an  element  all 
of  darkness.  He  says  he  was  a  pious  monk,  Ich  bin  einf ram- 
mer Munch  gewesen ;  faithfully,  painfully  struggling  to  work- 
out the  truth  of  this  high  act  of  his  ;  but  it  was  to  little  pur- 
pose. His  misery  had  not  lessened  ;  had  rather,  as  it  were, 
increased  into  infinitude.  The  drudgeries  he  had  to  do,  as 
novice  in  his  convent,  all  sorts  of  slave-work,  were  not  his 
grievance  :  the  deep  earnest  soul  of  the  man  had  fallen  into  all 
manner  of  black  scruples,  dubitations  ;  he  believed  himself 
likely  to  die  soon,  and  far  worse  than  die.  One  hears  with  a 
new  interest  for  poor  Luther  that,  at  this  time,  he  lived  in 
terror  of  the  unspeakable  misery  ;  fancied  that  he  was  doomed 
to  eternal  reprobation.  Was  it  not  the  humble  sincere  nature 
of  the  man  ?  What  was  he,  that  he  should  be  raised  to  heaven  ? 
He  that  had  known  only  misery,  and  mean  slavery  :  the  news 
was  too  blessed  to  be  credible.  It  could  not  become  clear  to 
him  how,  by  fasts,  vigils,  formalities  and  mass- work,  a  man's 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  125 

soul  could  be  saved.  He  fell  into  the  blackest  wretchedness  ; 
had  to  wander  staggering  as  on  the  verge  of  bottomless  de- 
spair. 

It  must  have  been  a  most  blessed  discovery,  that  of  an  old 
Latin  Bible  which  he  found  in  the  Erfurt  library  about  this 
time.  He  had  never  seen  the  book  before.  It  taught  him 
another  lesson  than  that  of  fasts  and  vigils.  A  brother  monk 
too,  of  pious  experience,  was  helpful.  Luther  learned  now 
that  a  man  was  saved  not  by  singing  masses,  but  by  the  infi- 
nite grace  of  God  ;  a  more  credible  hypothesis.  He  gradually 
got  himself  founded,  as  on  the  rock.  No  wonder  he  should 
venerate  the  Bible,  which  had  brought  this  blessed  help  to 
him.  He  prized  it  as  the  word  of  the  highest  must  be  prized 
by  such  a  man.  He  determined  to  hold  by  that ;  as  through 
life  and  to  death  he  firmly  did. 

This,  then,  is  his  deliverance  from  darkness,  his  final  tri- 
umph over  darkness,  what  we  call  his  conversion  ;  for  himself 
the  most  important  of  all  epochs.  That  he  should  now  grow 
daily  in  peace  and  clearness ;  that,  unfolding  now  the  great 
talents  and  virtues  implanted  in  him,  he  should  rise  to  impor- 
tance in  his  convent,  in  his  country,  and  be  found  more  and 
more  useful  in  all  honest  business  of  life,  is  a  natural  result. 
He  was  sent  on  missions  by  his  Augustine  order,  as  a  man  of 
talent  and  fidelity  fit  to  do  their  business  well :  the  Elector  of 
Saxony,  Friedrich,  named  the  Wise,  a  truly  wise  and  just 
prince,  had  cast  his  eye  on  him  as  a  valuable  person  ;  made 
him  professor  in  his  new  University  of  Wittenberg,  preacher 
too  at  Wittenberg  ;  in  both  which  capacities,  as  in  all  duties 
he  did,  this  Luther,  in  the  peaceable  sphere  of  common  life, 
was  gaining  more  and  more  esteem  with  all  good  men. 

It  was  in  his  twenty-seventh  year  that  he  first  saw  Rome  : 
being  sent  thither,  as  I  said,  on  mission  from  his  convent. 
Pope  Julius  the  Second,  and  what  was  going-on  at  Rome, 
must  have  filled  the  mind  of  Luther  Avith  amazement.  He 
had  come  as  to  the  sacred  city,  throne  of  God's  highpriest 
on  earth  ;  and  he  found  it — what  we  know  !  Many  thoughts 
it  must  have  given  the  man  ;  many  which  we  have  no  record 
of,  which  perhaps  he  did  not  himself  know  how  to  utter. 


126  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

This  Rome,  tins  scene  of  false  priests,  clothed  not  in  the 
beauty  of  holiness,  but  in  far  other  vesture,  is  false :  but  what 
is  it  to  Luther  ?  A  mean  man  he,  how  shall  he  reform  a 
world  ?  That  was  far  from  his  thoughts.  A  humble  solitary 
man,  why  should  he  at  all  meddle  with  the  world.  It  was 
the  task  of  quite  higher  men  than  he.  His  business  was  to 
guide  his  own  footsteps  wisely  through  the  world.  Let  him 
do  his  own  obscure  duty  in  it  well ;  the  rest,  horrible  and  dis- 
mal as  it  looks,  is  in  God's  hand,  not  in  his. 

It  is  curious  to  reflect  what  might  have  been  the  issue,  had 
Roman  popery  happened  to  pass  this  Luther  by  ;  to  go  on  in 
its  great  wasteful  orbit,  and  not  come  athwart  his  little  path, 
and  force  him  to  assault  it !  Conceivable  enough  that,  in  his 
case,  he  might  have  held  his  peace  about  the  abuses  of  Rome ; 
left  Providence,  and  God  on  high,  to  deal  with  them  !  A 
modest  quiet  man  ;  not  prompt  he  to  attack  irreverently  per- 
sons in  authority.  His  clear  task,  as  I  say,  was  to  do  his  own 
duty  ;  to  walk  wisely  in  this  world  of  confused  wickedness, 
and  save  his  own  soul  alive.  But  the  Roman  Highpriesthood 
did  come  athwart  him  :  afar  off  at  Wittenberg  he,  Luther, 
could  not  get  li ved  in  honesty  for  it ;  he  remonstrated,  re- 
sisted, came  to  extremity  ;  was  struck-at,  struck  again,  and 
so  it  came  to  wager  of  battle  between  them !  This  is  worth 
attending  to  in  Luther's  history.  Perhaps  no  man  of  so  hum- 
ble, peaceable  a  disposition  ever  filled  the  world  with  con- 
tention. We  cannot  but  see  that  he  would  have  loved  pri- 
vacy, quiet  diligence  in  the  shade  ;  that  it  was  against  his  will 
he  ever  became  a  notoriety.  Notoriety  :  what  would  that  do 
for  him  ?  The  goal  of  his  march  through  this  world  was  the 
infinite  heaven  ;  an  indubitable  goal  for  him  :  in  a  few  years, 
he  should  either  have  attained  that,  or  lost  it  forever  !  We 
will  say  nothing  at  all,  I  think,  of  that  sorrowfulest  of  theo- 
ries, of  its  being  some  mean  shopkeeper  grudge,  of  the  Au- 
gustine Monk  against  the  Dominican,  that  first  kindled  the 
wrath  of  Luther,  and  produced  the  Protestant  Reformation. 
We  will  say  to  the  people  who  maintain  it,  if  indeed  any  such 
exist  now  :  get  first  into  the  sphere  of  thought  by  which  it  is 
so  much  as  possible  to  judge  of  Luther,  or  of  any  man  like 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIES1.  127 

Luther,  otherwise  than  distractedly  ;  we  may  then  begin  ar- 
guing with  you. 

The  Monk  Tetzel,  sent  out  carelessly  in  the  way  of  trade, 
by  Leo  Tenth, — who  merely  wanted  to  raise  a  little  money, 
and  for  the  rest  seems  to  have  been  a  Pagan  rather  than  a 
Christian,  so  far  as  he  was  anything, — arrived  at  Wittenberg, 
and  drove  his  scandalous  trade  there.  Luther's  flock  bought 
indulgences ;  in  the  confessional  of  his  church,  people  pleaded 
to  him  that  they  had  already  got  their  sins  pardoned.  Luther, 
if  he  would  not  be  found  wanting  at  his  own  post,  a  false 
sluggard  and  coward  at  the  very  center  of  the  little  space  of 
ground  that  was  his  own  and  no  other  man's,  had  to  step- 
forth  against  indulgences,  and  declare  aloud  that  they  were  a 
futility  and  sorrowful  mockery,  that  no  man's  sins  could  be 
pardoned  by  them.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  whole  refor- 
mation. We  know  how  it  went ;  forward  from  this  first  pub- 
lic challenge  of  Tetzel,  on  the  last  day  of  October,  1517, 
through  remonstrance  and  argument ; — spreading  ever  wider, 
rising  ever  higher  ;  till  it  became  unquenchable,  and  envel- 
oped all  the  world.  Luther's  heart's  desire  was  to  have  this 
grief  and  other  griefs  amended  ;  his  thought  was  still  far 
other  than  that  of  introducing  separation  in  the  church,  or 
revolting  against  the  pope,  father  of  Christendom. — The  ele- 
gant pagan  pope  cared  little  about  this  monk  and  his  doc- 
trines ;  wished,  however,  to  have  done  with  the  noise  of  him  : 
in  a  space  of  some  three  years  having  tried  various  softer 
methods,  he  thought  good  to  end  it  by  fire.  He  dooms  the 
monk's  writings  to  be  burnt  by  the  hangman,  and  his  body  to 
be  sent  bound  to  Rome, — probably  for  a  similar  purpose. 
It  was  the  way  they  had  ended  with  Huss,  with  Jerome,  the 
century  before.  A  short  argument,  fire.  Poor  Huss :  he 
came  to  that  Constance  Council,  with  all  imaginable  promises 
and  safe-conducts ;  an  earnest,  not  rebellious  kind  of  man  : 
they  laid  him  instantly  in  a  stone  dungeon  "  three-feet  wide, 
six-feet  high,  seven-feet  long ; "  burnt  the  true  voice  of  him 
out  of  this  world  ;  choked  it  in  smoke  and  fire.  That  was  not 
well  done  ! 

I,  for  one,  pardon  Luther  for  now  altogether  revolting 


128  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

against  the  pope.  The  elegant  pagan,  by  this  fire-decree  of 
his,  had  kindled  into  noble  just  wrath  the  bravest  heart  then 
living  in  this  world.  The  bravest,  if  also  one  of  the  humblest, 
peaceablest ;  it  was  now  kindled.  These  words  of  mine, 
words  of  truth  and  soberness,  aiming  faithfully,  as  human  in- 
ability would  allow,  to  promote  God's  truth  on  earth,  and 
save  men's  souls,  you,  God's  vicegerent  on  earth,  answer  them 
by  the  hangman  and  fire  ?  You  will  burn  me  and  them,  for 
answer  to  the  God's-message  they  strove  to  bring  you.  You 
are  not  God's  vicegerent ;  you  are  another's  than  his,  I 
think !  I  take  your  bull,  as  an  emparchmented  lie,  and  bum 
it.  You  will  do  what  you  see  good  next :  that  is  what  I  do. 
— It  was  on  the  10th  of  December  1520,  three  years  after  the 
beginning  of  the  business,  that  Luther,  "  with  a  great  con- 
course of  people,"  took  this  indignant  step  of  burning  the 
pope's  fire-degree  "at  the  Elster  Gate  of  Wittenberg." 
Wittenberg  looked  on  "  with  shoutings ;  "  the  whole  world 
was  looking  on.  The  pope  should  not  have  provoked  that 
"  shout !  "  It  was  the  shout  of  the  awakening  of  nations. 
The  quiet  German  heart,  modest,  patient  of  much,  had  at 
length  got  more  than  it  could  bear.  Formulism,  pagan  pope- 
ism,  and  other  falsehood  and  corrupt  semblance  had  ruled 
long  enough  :  and  here  once  more  was  a  man  found  who 
durst  tell  all  men  that  God's-world  stood  not  on  semblances 
but  on  realities  ;  that  life  was  a  truth  and  not  a  lie ! 

At  bottom,  as  was  said  above,  we  are  to  consider  Luther  as 
a  prophet  idol-breaker ;  a  bringer-back  of  men  to  reality.  It 
is  the  function  of  great  men  and  teachers.  Mohammed  said, 
These  idols  of  yours  are  wood ;  you  put  wax  and  oil  on  them, 
the  flies  stick  on  them :  they  are  not  God,  I  tell  you,  they  are 
black  wood !  Luther  said  to  the  pope,  This  thing  of  yours 
that  you  cah1  a  Pardon  of  Sins,  it  is  a  bit  of  rag-paper  with 
ink.  It  is  nothing  else;  it,  and  so  much  like  it,  is  nothing 
else.  God  alone  can  pardon  sins.  Popeship,  spiritual  father- 
hood of  God's  church,  is  that  a  vain  semblance  of  cloth  and 
parchment  ?  It  is  an  awful  fact.  God's  church  is  not  a  sem- 
blance, heaven  and  hell  are  not  semblances.  I  stand  on  this, 
since  you  drive  me  to  it.  Standing  on  this,  I  a  poor  German 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  129 

monk  am  stronger  than  you  all.  I  stand  solitary,  friendless, 
but  on  God's  truth  ;  you  with  your  tiaras,  triple-hats,  with 
your  treasuries  and  armories,  thunders  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral, stand  on  the  devil's  lie,  and  are  not  so  strong ! — 

The  diet  of  Worms,  Luther's  appearance  there  on  the  17th 
of  April,  1521,  may  be  considered  as  the  greatest  scene  in 
modern  European  history ;  the  point,  indeed,  from  which  the 
whole  subsequent  history  of  civilization  takes  its  rise.  After 
multiplied  negotiations,  disputations,  it  had  come  to  this. 
The  young  Emperor  Charles  Fifth,  with  all  the  princes  of 
Germany,  papal  nuncios,  dignitaries  spiritual  and  temporal, 
are  assembled  there  :  Luther  is  to  appear  and  answer  for  him- 
self, whether  he  will  recant  or  not.  The  world's  pomp  and 
power  sits  there  on  this  hand  :  on  that,  stands-up  for  God's 
truth,  one  man,  the  poor  miner  Hans  Luther's  son.  Friends 
had  reminded  him  of  Huss,  advised  him  not  to  go ;  he  would 
not  be  advised.  A  large  company  of  friends  rode-out  to  meet 
him,  with  still  more  earnest  warnings  ;  he  answered,  "  Were 
there  as  many  devils  in  Worms  as  there  are  roof-tiles,  I  would 
on."  The  people,  on  the  morrow,  as  he  went  to  the  Hall  of 
the  Diet,  crowded  the  windows  and  housetops,  some  of  them 
calling  out  to  him,  in  solemn  words,  not  to  recant :  "Whoso- 
ever denieth  me  before  men ! "  they  cried  to  him, — as  in  a 
kind  of  solemn  petition  and  adjuration.  Was  it  not  in  real- 
ity our  petition  too,  the  petition  of  the  whole  world,  lying  in 
dark  bondage  of  soul,  paralyzed  under  a  black  spectral  night- 
mare and  triple-hatted  chimera,  calling  itself  Father  in  God, 
and  what  not :  "Free  us  ;  it  rests  with  thee  ;  desert  us  not ! " 

Luther  did  not  desert  us.  His  speech,  of  two  hours,  dis- 
tinguished itself  by  its  respectful,  wise  and  honest  tone ;  sub- 
missive to  whatsoever  could  lawfully  claim  submission,  not 
submissive  to  any  more  than  that  His  writings,  he  said, 
were  partly  his  own,  partly  derived  from  the  word  of  God. 
As  to  what  was  his  own,  human  infirmity  entered  into  it ;  un- 
guarded anger,  blindness,  many  things  doubtless  which  it 
were  a  blessing  for  him  could  he  abolish  altogether.  But  as 
to  what  stood  on  sound  truth  and  the  word  of  God,  he  could 
not  recant  it.  How  could  he  ?  "Confute  me,"  he  concluded, 
9 


130  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

"  by  proofs  of  Scripture,  or  else  by  plain  just  arguments :  I 
cannot  recant  otherwise.  For  it  is  neither  safe  nor  prudent 
to  do  aught  against  conscience.  Here  stand  I ;  I  can  do  no 
other :  God  assist  me  ! " — It  is,  as  we  say,  the  greatest  moment 
in  the  modern  history  of  men.  English  Puritanism,  England 
and  its  Parliaments,  Americas,  and  vast  work  these  two  cen- 
turies; French  Kevolution,  Europe  and  its  work  everywhere 
at  present :  the  germ  of  it  all  lay  there  :  had  Luther  in  that 
moment  done  other,  it  had  all  been  otherwise !  The  Euro- 
pean world  was  asking  him :  am  I  to  sink  ever  lower  into 
falsehood,  stagnant  putrescence,  loathsome  accursed  death  ; 
or,  with  whatever  paroxysm,  to  cast  the  falsehoods  out  of  me, 
and  be  cured  and  live  ? — 

Great  wars,  contentions  and  disunion  followed  out  of  this 
reformation  ;  which  last  down  to  our  day,  and  are  yet  far 
from  ended.  Great  talk  and  crimination  has  been  made  about 
these.  They  are  lamentable,  undeniable  ;  but  after  all,  what 
has  Luther  or  his  cause  to  do  with  them?  It  seems  strange 
reasoning  to  charge  the  Reformation  with  all  this.  When 
Hercules  turned  the  purifying  river  into  King  Augeas's  sta- 
bles, I  have  no  doubt  the  confusion  that  resulted  was  consid- 
erable all  around  :  but  I  think  it  was  not  Hercules's  blame  ;  it 
was  some  other's  blame  !  The  reformation  might  bring  what 
results  it  liked  when  it  came,  but  the  reformation  simply  could 
not  help  coming.  To  all  popes  and  popes'  advocates,  expos- 
tulating, lamenting  and  accusing,  the  answer  of  the  world  is : 
once  for  all,  your  popehood  has  become  untrue.  No  matter 
how  good  it  was,  how  good  you  say  it  is,  we  cannot  believe 
it ;  the  light  of  our  whole  mind,  given  us  to  walk-by  from 
heaven  above,  finds  it  henceforth  a  thing  unbelievable.  We 
will  not  believe  it,  we  will  not  try  to  believe  it, — we  dare  not ! 
The  thing  is  untrue ;  we  were  traitors  against  the  Giver  of  all 
truth,  if  we  durst  pretend  to  think  it  true.  Away  with  it ;  let 
whatsoever  likes  come  in  the  place  of  it:  with  it  \ve  can 
have  no  farther  trade  ! — Luther  and  his  Protestantism  is  not 
responsible  for  wars ;  the  false  simulacra  that  forced  him  to 
protest,  they  are  responsible.  Luther  did  what  every  man 


THE  HEKO  AS  PRIEST.  131 

that  God  lias  made  has  not  only  the  right,  but  lies  under  the 
sacred  duty,  to  do  :  answered  a  falsehood  v:hen  it  questioned 
him,  dost  thou  believe  me? — No ! — At  what  cost  soever,  with- 
out counting  of  costs,  this  thing  behoved  to  be  done.  Union, 
organization  spiritual  and  material,  a  far  nobler  than  any 
popedom  or  feudalism  in  their  truest  days,  I  never  doubt,  is 
coming  for  the  world  ;  sure  to  come.  But  on  fact  alone,  not 
on  semblance  and  simulacrum,  will  it  be  able  either  to  come, 
or  to  stand  when  come.  With  union  grounded  on  falsehood, 
and  ordering  us  to  speak  and  act  lies,  we  will  not  have  any- 
thing to  do.  Peace  ?  A  brutal  lethargy  is  peaceable,  the 
noisome  grave  is  peaceable.  We  hope  for  a  living  peace,  not 
a  dead  one ! 

And  yet,  in  prizing  justly  the  indispensable  blessings  of  the 
new,  let  us  not  be  unjust  to  the  old.  The  old  icas  true,  if  it 
no  longer  is.  In  Dante's  days  it  needed  no  sophistry,  self- 
blinding  or  other  dishonesty,  to  get  itself  reckoned  true.  It 
was  good  then  ;  nay,  there  is  in  the  soul  of  it  a  deathless 
good.  The  cry  of  "  No  popery  "  is  foolish  enough  in  these 
days.  The  speculation  that  popery  is  on  the  increase,  build- 
ing new  chapels  and  so  forth,  may  pass  for  one  of  the  idlest 
ever  started.  Very  curious :  to  count  -  up  a  few  popish 
chapels,  listen  to  a  few  Protestant  logic-choppings, — to  much 
dull-droning  drowsy  inanity  that  still  calls  itself  Protestant, 
and  say  :  see,  Protestantism  is  dead  ;  popeism  is  more  alive 
than  it,  will  be  alive  after  it ! — Drowsy  inanities,  not  a  few, 
that  call  themselves  Protestant  are  dead  ;  but  Protestantism 
has  not  died  yet,  that  I  hear  of  !  Protestantism,  if  we  will 
look,  has  in  these  days  produced  its  Goethe,  its  Napoleon  ; 
German  literature  and  the  French  Revolution  ;  rather  con- 
siderable signs  of  life  !  Nay,  at  bottom,  what  else  is  alive  but 
Protestantism  ?  The  life  of  most  else  that  one  meets  is  a 
galvanic  one  merely, — not  a  pleasant,  not  a  lasting  sort  of  life  ! 

Popery  can  build  new  chapels ;  welcome  to  do  so,  to  all 
lengths.  Popery  cannot  come  back,  any  more  than  paganism 
can, — which  also  still  lingers  in  some  countries.  But,  indeed, 
it  is  with  these  things,  as  with  the  ebbing  of  the  sea  :  you 
look  at  the  waves  oscillating  hither,  thither  on  the  beach  ;  for 


132  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSUIP. 

minutes  you  cannot  tell  how  it  is  going  ;  look  in  half  an  hour 
where  it  is, — look  in  half  a  century  where  your  popehood  is  ? 
Alas,  would  there  were  no  greater  danger  to  our  Europe  than 
the  poor  old  pope's  revival !  Thor  may  as  soon  try  to  revive. 
— And  withal  this  oscillation  has  a  meaning.  The  poor  old 
popehood  will  not  die  away  entirely,  as  Thor  has  done,  for 
some  time  yet ;  nor  ought  it.  We  may  say,  the  old  never 
dies  till  this  happen,  tiU  all  the  soul  of  good  that  was  in  it 
have  got-  itself  transfused  into  the  practical  new.  "While  a 
good  work  remains  capable  of  being  done  by  the  Romish 
form  ;  or,  what  is  inclusive  of  ah1,  while  a  pious  life  remains 
capable  of  being  led  by  it,  just  so  long,  if  we  consider,  will 
this  or  the  other  human  soul  adopt  it,  go  about  as  a  living 
witness  of  it.  So  long  it  will  obtrude  itself  on  the  eye  of  us 
who  reject  it,  tih1  we  in  our  practice  too  have  appropriated 
whatsoever  of  truth  was  in  it.  Then,  but  also  not  till  then,  it 
will  have  no  charm  more  for  any  man.  It  lasts  here  for  a 
purpose.  Let  it  last  as  long  as  it  can. — 

Of  Luther  I  will  add  now,  in  reference  to  all  these  wars 
and  bloodshed,  the  noticeable  fact  that  none  of  them  began 
so  long  as  he  continued  living.  The  controversy  did  not  get 
to  fighting  so  long  as  he  was  there.  To  me  it  is  proof  of  his 
greatness  in  all  senses,  this  fact.  How  seldom  do  we  find  a 
man  that  has  stirred-up  some  vast  commotion,  who  does  not 
himself  perish,  swept  away  in  it !  Such  is  the  usual  course  of 
revolutionists.  Luther  continued,  in  a  good  degree,  sovereign 
of  this  greatest  revolution  ;  all  Protestants,  of  what  rank  or 
function  soever,  looking  much  to  him  for  guidance  :  and  he 
held  it  peaceable,  continued  firm  at  the  centre  of  it.  A  man 
to  do  this  must  have  a  kingly  faculty  :  he  must  have  the  gift 
to  discern  at  all  turns  where  the  true  heart  of  the  matter  lies, 
and  to  plant  himself  courageously  on  that,  as  a  strong  true 
man,  that  other  true  men  may  rally  round  him  there.  Ho 
will  not  continue  leader  of  men  otherwise.  Luther's  clear 
deep  force  of  judgment,  his  force  of  all  sorts,  of  silence,  of 
tolerance  and  moderation,  among  others,  are  very  notable  in 
these  circumstance. 


THE  I1ERO  AS  PRIEST.  133 

Tolerance,  I  say  ;  a  very  genuine  kind  of  tolerance  :  lie  dis- 
tinguishes what  is  essential,  and  what  is  not ;  the  unessential 
may  go  very  much  as  it  will.  A  complaint  comes  to  him  that 
such  and  such  a  reformed  preacher  "  will  not  preach  without 
a  cassock."  Well,  answers  Luther,  what  harm  will  a  cassock 
do  the  man  ?  "  Let  him  have  a  cassock  to  preach  in  ;  let  him 
have  three  cassocks  if  he  find  benefit  in  them  ! "  His  conduct 
in  the  matter  of  Karlstadt's  wild  image-breaking  ;  of  the  Ana- 
baptists ;  of  the  peasant's  war,  shows  a  noble  strength,  very 
different  from  spasmodic  violence.  "With  sure  prompt  insight 
he  discriminates  what  is  what :  a  strong  just  man,  he  speaks 
forth  what  is  the  wise  course,  and  all  men  follow  him  in  that. 
Luther's  written  works  give  similar  testimony  of  him.  The 
dialect  of  these  speculations  is  now  grown  obsolete  for  us  ; 
but  one  still  reads  them  with  a  singular  attraction.  And  in- 
deed the  mere  grammatical  diction  is  still  legible  enough  ; 
Luther's  merit  in  literary  history  is  of  the  gi'eatest ;  his 
dialect  became  the  language  of  all  writing.  They  are  not 
well  written,  these  four-and-twenty  quartos  of  his  ;  written 
hastily,  with  quite  other  than  literary  objects.  But  in  no 
books  have  I  found  a  more  robust,  genuine,  I  will  say  noble 
faculty  of  a  man  than  in  these.  A  rugged  honesty,  homeli- 
ness, simplicity  ;  a  rugged  sterling  sense  and  strength.  He 
flashes-out  illumination  from  him  ;  his  smiting  idiomatic 
phrases  seem  to  cleave  into  the  very  secret  of  the  matter. 
Good  humor  too,  nay  tender  affection,  nobleness,  and  depth  : 
this  man  could  have  been  a  poet  too !  He  had  to  work  an 
epic  poem,  not  write  one.  I  call  him  a  great  thinker  ;  as  in- 
deed his  greatness  of  heart  already  betokens  that. 

Richter  says  of  Luther's  words,  "  his  words  are  half- 
battles."  They  may  be  called  so.  The  essential  quality  of 
him  was,  that  he  could  fight  and  conquer ;  that  he  was  a 
right  piece  of  human  valor.  No  more  valiant  man,  no  mortal 
heart  to  be  called  braver,  that  one  has  record  of,  ever  lived  in 
that  Teutonic  kindred,  whose  character  is  valor.  His  defiance 
of  the  "  Devils  "  in  "Worms  was  not  a  mere  boast,  as  the  like 
might  be  if  now  spoken.  It  was  a  faith  of  Luther's  that  there 
were  devils,  spiritual  denizens  of  the  pit,  continually  besetting 


134  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

men.  Many  times,  in  his  writings,  this  turns-up ;  and  a 
most  small  sneer  has  been  grounded  on  it  by  some.  lu  the 
room  of  the  Wartberg  where  he  sat  translating  the  Bible, 
they  still  show  you  a  black  spot  on  the  wall :  the  strange 
memorial  of  one  of  these  conflicts.  Luther  sat  translating 
one  of  the  psalms  ;  he  was  worn  down  with  long  labor,  with 
sickness,  abstinence  from  food  ;  there  rose  before  him  some 
hideous,  indefinable  image,  which  he  took  for  the  evil  one,  to 
forbid  his  work  ;  Luther  started-up,  with  fiend-defiance ; 
flung  his  inkstand  at  the  spectre,  and  it  disappeared  !  The 
spot  still  remains  there ;  a  curious  monument  of  several 
things.  Any  apothecary's  apprentice  can  now  tell  us  what  we 
are  to  think  of  this  apparition,  in  a  scientific  sense  :  but  the 
man's  heart  that  dare  rise  defiant,  face  to  face,  against  hell 
itself,  can  give  no  higher  proof  of  fearlessness.  The  thing  ho 
will  quail  before  exists  not  on  this  earth  or  under  it. — Fearless 
enough  !  "  The  devil  is  aware,"  writes  he  on  one  occasion, 
"  that  this  does  not  proceed  out  of  fear  in  me.  I  have  seen 
and  defied  innumerable  devils.  Duke  George,"  of  Leipzig,  a 
great  enemy  of  his,  "Duke  George  is  not  equal  to  one  devil," 
— far  short  of  a  devil !  "  If  I  had  business  at  Leipzig,  I  would 
ride  into  Leipzig,  though  it  rained  Duke-Georges  for  nine 
days  running."  What  a  reservoir  of  Dukes  to  ride  into  ! — 

At  the  same  time,  they  err  greatly  who  imagine  that  this 
man's  courage  was  ferocity,  mere  coarse  disobedient  obsti- 
nacy and  savagery,  as  many  do.  Far  from  that.  There  may 
be  an  absence  of  fear  which  arises  from  the  absence  of  thought 
or  affection,  from  the  presence  of  hatred  and  stupid  fury.  We 
do  not  value  the  courage  of  the  tiger  highly  !  With  Luther 
it  was  far  otherwise  ;  no  accusation  could  be  more  unjust  than 
this  of  mere  ferocious  violence  brought  against  him.  A  most 
gentle  heart  withal,  full  of  pity  and  love,  as  indeed  the  truly 
valiant  heart  ever  is.  The  tiger  before  a  stronger  foe — flies  : 
the  tiger  is  not  what  we  call  valiant,  only  fierce  and  cruel.  I 
know  few  things  more  touching  than  those  soft  breathings  of 
affection,  soft  as  a  child's  or  a  mother's,  in  this  great  wild 
heart  of  Luther.  So  honest,  unadulterated  with  any  cant ; 
homely,  rude  in  their  utterance  ;  pure  as  water  welling  from 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  135 

the  rock.  What,  in  fact,  was  all  that  down-pressed  mood  of 
despair  and  repix>bation,  which  we  saw  in  his  youth,  but  the 
outcome  of  preeminent  thoughtful  gentleness,  affections  too 
keen  and  fine  ?  It  is  the  course  such  men  as  the  poor  poet 
Cowper  fall  into.  Luther  to  a  slight  observer  might  have 
seemed  a  timid,  weak  man  ;  modesty,  affectionate  shrinking 
tenderness  the  chief  distinction  of  him.  It  is  a  nobler  valor 
which  is  roused  in  a  heart  like  this,  once  stirred-up  into  defi- 
ance, all  kindled  into  a  heavenly  blaze. 

In  Luther's  "  Table-Talk,"  a  posthumous  book  of  anecdotes 
and  sayings  collected  by  his  friends,  the  most  interesting  now 
of  all  the  books  proceeding  from  him,  we  have  many  beautiful 
unconscious  displays  of  the  man,  and  what  sort  of  nature  he 
had.  His  behavior  at  the  deathbed  of  his  little  daughter,  so 
still,  so  great  and  loving,  is  among  the  most  affecting  things. 
He  is  resigned  that  his  little  Magdalene  should  die,  yet  longs 
inexpressibly  that  she  might  live ;  follows,  in  awestruck 
thought,  the  flight  of  her  little  soul  through  those  unknown 
realms.  Awestruck  ;  most  heartfelt,  we  can  see  ;  and  sincere, 
— for  after  all  dogmatic  creeds  and  articles,  he  feels  what  noth- 
ing it  is  that  we  know,  or  can  know ;  his  little  Magdalene  shall  be 
with  God,  as  God  wills  ;  for  Luther  too  that  is  all ;  Islam  is  all 

Once,  he  looks  out  from  his  solitary  Patmos,  the  Castle  of 
Coburg,  in  the  middle  of  the  night :  The  great  vault  of  im- 
mensity, long  flights  of  clouds  sailing  through  it, — dumb, 
gaunt,  huge  :  who  supports  all  that  ?  "  None  ever  saw  the 
pillars  of  it  ;  yet  it  is  supported."  God  supports  it.  We 
must  know  that  God  is  great,  that  God  is  good  ;  and  trust, 
where  we  cannot  see. — Returning  home  from  Leipzig  once, 
he  is  struck  by  the  beauty  of  the  harvest-fields  :  How  it 
stands,  that  golden  yellow  corn,  on  its  fair  taper  stem,  its 
golden  head  bent,  all  rich  and  waving  there, — the  meek  earth, 
at  God's  kind  bidding,  has  produced  it  once  again  ;  the  bread 
of  man ! — In  the  garden  at  Wittenberg  one  evening  at 
sunset,  a  little  bird  has  perched  for  the  night :  That  little 
bird,  says  Luther,  above  it  are  the  stars  and  deep  heaven  of 
worlds  ;  yet  it  has  folded  its  little  wings ;  gone  trustfully  to 
rest  there  as  in  its  home  :  the  Maker  of  it  has  given  it  too  a 


136  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

home  ! — Neither  are  mirthful  turns  wanting  :  there  is  a  great 
free  human  heart  in  this  man.  The  common  speech  of  him  has 
a  rugged  nobleness,  idiomatic,  expressive,  genuine  ;  gleams 
here  and  there  with  beautiful  poetic  tints.  One  feels  him  to 
be  a  great  brother  man.  His  love  of  music,  indeed,  is  not 
this,  as  it  were,  the  summary  of  all  these  affections  in  him  ? 
Many  a  wild  unutterability  he  spoke-forth  from  him  in  the 
tones  of  his  flute.  The  devils  fled  from  his  flute,  he  says. 
Death-defiance  on  the  one  hand,  and  such  love  of  music  on 
the  other  ;  I  could  call  these  the  two  opposite  poles  of  a  great 
soul ;  between  these  two  all  great  things  had  room. 

Luther's  face  is  to  me  expressive  of  him  :  in  Kranach's  best 
portraits  I  find  the  true  Luther.  A  rude  plebeian  face  ;  with 
its  huge  crag-like  brows  and  bones,  the  emblem  of  rugged 
energy  ;  at  first,  almost  a  repulsive  face.  Yet  in  the  eyes  es- 
pecially there  is  a  wild  silent  sorrow ;  an  unnameable  mel- 
ancholy, the  element  of  all  gentle  and  fine  affections  ;  giving 
to  the  rest  the  true  stamp  of  nobleness.  Laughter  was  in  this 
Luther,  as  we  said  ;  but  tears  also  were  there.  Tears  also 
were  appointed  him  ;  tears  and  hard  toil.  The  basis  of  his 
life  was  sadness,  earnestness.  In  his  latter  days,  after  nil 
triumphs  and  victories,  he  expresses  himself  heartily  weary  of 
living  ;  he  considers  that  God  alone  can  and  will  regulate  the 
course  things  are  taking,  and  that  perhaps  the  day  of  judg- 
ment is  not  far.  As  for  him,  he  longs  for  one  thing ;  that 
God  would  release  him  from  his  labor,  and  let  him  depart 
and  be  at  rest.  They  understand  little  of  the  man  who  cite 
this  hi  discredit,  of  him  ! — I  will  call  this  Luther  a  true  great 
man ;  great  in  intellect,  in  courage,  affection  and  integrity ; 
one  of  our  most  lovable  and  precious  men.  Great,  not  as  a 
hewn  obelisk  ;  but  as  an  Alpine  mountain, — so  simple,  hon- 
est, spontaneous,  not  setting-up  to  be  great  at  all ;  there  for 
quite  another  purpose  than  being  great !  Ah  yes,  unsubdu- 
able  granite,  piercing  far  and  wide  into  the  heavens  ;  yet  in 
the  clefts  of  it  fountains,  green  beautiful  valleys  with  flowers ! 
A  right  spiritual  hero  and  prophet ;  once  more,  a  true  son  of 
nature  and  fact,  for  whom  these  centuries,  and  many  that  are 
to  come  yet,  will  be  thankful  to  heaven. 


TUE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  137 

The  most  interesting  phasis  which  the  Reformation  any- 
where assumes,  especially  for  us  English,  is  that  of  Puritan- 
ism. In  Luther's  own  country  Protestantism  soon  dwindled 
into  a  rather  barren  affair  ;  not  a  religion  or  faith,  but  rather 
DOW  a  theological  jangling  of  argument,  the  proper  seat  of  it 
not  the  heart ;  the  essence  of  it  skeptical  contention  :  which 
indeed  has  jangled  more  and  more,  down  to  Voltaireism  itself, 
— through  Gustavus-Adolphus  contentions  onward  to  French- 
revolution  ones !  But  in  our  island  there  arose  a  Puritanism, 
which  even  got  itself  established  as  a  Presbyterianism  and 
National  Church  among  the  Scotch ;  which  came  forth  as  a 
real  business  of  the  heart ;  and  has  produced  in  the  world 
very  notable  fruit.  In  some  senses,  one  may  say  it  is  the  only 
phasis  of  Protestantism  that  ever  got  to  the  rank  of  being  a 
faith,  a  true  heart-communication  with  heaven,  and  of  exhib- 
iting itself  in  history  as  such.  We  must  spare  a  few  words 
for  Knox;  himself  a  brave  and  remarkable  man;  but  still 
more  important  as  chief  priest  and  founder,  which  one  may 
consider  him  to  be,  of  the  faith  that  became  Scotland's,  New 
England's,  Oliver  Cromwell's.  History  wiU  have  something 
to  say  about  this,  for  some  time  to  come  ! 

We  may  censure  Puritanism  as  we  please  ;  and  no  one  of 
us,  I  suppose,  but  would  find  it  a  very  rough  defective  thing. 
But  we,  and  all  men,  may  understand  it  was  a  genuine  thing, 
for  nature  has  adopted  it,  and  it  has  grown,  and  grows.  I 
say  sometimes,  that  all  goes  by  wager-of-battle  in  this  world  ; 
that  strength,  well  understood,  is  the  measure  of  all  worth. 
Give  a  thing  time  ;  if  it  can  succeed,  it  is  a  right  thing.  Look 
now  at  American  Saxondom  ;  and  at  that  little  fact  of  the 
sailing  of  the  Mayflower,  two-hundred  years  ago,  from  Delft 
Haven  in  Holland !  Were  we  of  open  sense  as  the  Greeks 
were,  we  had  found  a  poem  here  ;  one  of  nature's  own  poems, 
such  as  she  writes  in  broad  facts  over  great  continents.  For 
it  was  properly  the  beginning  of  America  :  there  were  strag- 
gling settlers  in  America  before,  some  material  as  of  a  body 
was  there  ;  but  the  soul  of  it  was  first  this.  These  poor  men, 
driven-out  of  their  own  country,  not  able  well  to  live  in  Hol- 
land, determine  on  settling  in  the  New  World.  Black  untamed 


138  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

forests  are  there,  and  wild  savage  creatures  ;  but  not  so  cruel 
as  Starchamber  hangmen.  They  thought  the  earth  would 
yield  them  food,  if  they  tilled  honestly  ;  the  everlasting 
heaven  would  stretch,  there  too,  overhead ;  they  should  be 
left  in  peace,  to  prepare  for  eternity  by  living  well  in  this 
world  of  time  ;  worshiping  in  what  they  thought  the  true, 
not  the  idolatrous  way.  They  clubbed  their  small  means 
together  ;  hired  a  ship,  the  little  ship  Mayflower,  and  made 
ready  to  set  sail. 

In  Neal's  "History  of  the  Puritans"*  is  an  account  of  the 
ceremony  of  their  departure  ;  solemnity,  we  might  call  it 
rather,  for  it  was  a  real  act  of  worship.  Their  minister  went 
down  with  them  to  the  beach,  and  their  brethren  whom  they 
were  to  leave  behind  ;  all  joined  in  solemn  prayer,  that  God 
would  have  pity  on  his  poor  children,  and  go  with  them  into 
that  waste  wilderness,  for  He  also  had  made  that,  He  was 
there  also  as  well  as  here. — Hah  !  These  men,  I  think,  had  a 
work  !  The  weak  thing,  weaker  than  a  child,  becomes  strong 
one  day,  if  it  be  a  true  thing.  Puritanism  was  only  despi- 
cable, laughable  then  ;  but  nobody  can  manage  to  laugh  at  it 
now.  Puritanism  has  got  weapons  and  sinews;  it  has  fire- 
arms ;  war-navies  ;  it  has  cunning  in  its  ten  fingers,  strength 
in  its  right  arm  ;  it  can  steer  ships,  fell  forests,  remove 
mountains  ; — it  is  one  of  the  strongest  things  under  the  sun 
at  present ! 

In  the  history  of  Scotland,  too,  I  can  find  properly  but  one 
epoch  :  we  may  say,  it  contains  nothing  of  world  interest  at 
all  but  this  Reformation  by  Knox.  A  poor  barren  country, 
full  of  continual  broils,  dissensions,  massacrings  ;  a  people  in 
the  last  state  of  rudeness  and  destitution,  little  better  per- 
haps than  Ireland  at  this  day.  Hungry  fierce  barons,  not  so 
much  as  able  to  form  any  arrangement  with  each  other  how 
to  divide  what  they  fleeced  from  these  poor  drudges ;  but 
obliged,  as  the  Columbian  Republics  are  at  this  day,  to  make 
of  every  alteration  a  revolution  ;  no  way  of  changing  a  minis- 
try but  by  hanging  the  old  ministers  on  gibbets  :  this  is  a  his- 
torical spectacle  of  no  very  singular  significance  !  "  Bravery  " 
*  Ncal  (London  1755,)  i.  490. 


THE  IIERO  AS  PRIEST.  139 

enough,  I  doubt  not ;  fierce  fighting  in  abundance  ;  but  not 
braver  or  fiercer  than  that  of  their  own  Scandinavian  Sea-king 
ancestors  ;  ichose  exploits  we  have  not  found  worth  dwelling 
on  !  It  is  a  country  as  yet  without  a  soul :  nothing  developed 
in  it  but  what  is  rude,  external,  semi-animal.  And  now  at 
the  Reformation,  the  internal  life  is  kindled,  as  it  were,  under 
the  ribs  of  this  outward  material  death.  A  cause,  the  noblest 
of  causes  kindles  itself,  like  a  beacon  set  on  high  ;  high  as 
heaven,  yet  attainable  from  earth ; — whereby  the  meanest 
man  becomes  not  a  citizen  only,  but  a  member  of  Christ's 
visible  Church  ;  a  veritable  hero,  if  he  prove  a  true  man  ! 

Well ;  this  is  what  I  mean  by  a  whole  "  nation  of  heroes  ;" 
a  believing  nation.  There  needs  not  a  great  soul  to  make  a 
hero  ;  there  needs  a  god-created  soul  which  will  be  true  to 
its  origin  ;  that  will  be  a  great  soul !  The  like  has  been  seen, 
we  find.  The  like  will  be  again  seen  ;  under  wider  forms 
than  the  Presbyterian  :  there  can  be  no  lasting  good  done 
till  then. — Impossible  !  say  some.  Possible  ?  Has  it  not 
been,  in  this  world,  as  a  practised  fact  ?  Did  hero-worship 
fail  in  Knox's  case  ?  Or  are  we  made  of  other  clay  now  ? 
Did  the  Westminster  confession  of  faith  add  some  new  prop- 
erty to  the  soul  of  man  ?  God  made  the  soul  of  man.  He 
did  not  doom  any  soul  of  man  to  live  as  a  hypothesis  and 
hearsay,  in  a  world  filled  with  such,  and  with  the  fatal  work 
and  fruit  of  such  ! 

But  to  return  :  This  that  Knox  did  for  his  nation,  I  say,  we 
may  really  call  a  resurrection  as  from  death.  It  was  not  a 
smooth  business ;  but  it  was  welcome  surely,  and  cheap  afc 
that  price,  had  it  been  far  rougher.  On  the  whole,  cheap  at 
any  price  ; — as  life  is.  The  people  began  to  live  ;  they  need 
first  of  all  to  do  that,  at  what  cost  and  costs  soever.  Scotch 
literature  and  thought,  Scotch  industry  ;  James  Watt,  David 
Hume,  Walter  Scott,  Robert  Burns  :  I  find  Knox  and  the  Ref- 
ormation acting  in  the  heart's  core  of  every  one  of  these  per- 
sons and  phenomena;  I  find  that  without  the  Reformation 
they  would  not  have  been.  Or  what  of  Scotland  ?  The  Puri- 
tanism of  Scotland  became  that  of  England,  of  New  England. 
A  tumult  in  the  High  Church  of  Edinburgh  spread  into  a  uni- 


140  HEROES  AND  HERO   WORSHIP. 

versal  battle  and  struggle  over  all  these  realms  ; — there  came 
out,  after  fifty-years  struggling,  what  we  all  call  the  "  Glorious 
Revolution,"  a  habeas-corpus  act,  free  parliaments,  and  much 
else  ! — Alas,  is  it  not  too  true  what  we  said,  that  many  men  in 
the  van  do  always,  like  Russian  soldiers,  march  into  the  ditch 
of  Schwiednitz,  and  fill  it  up  with  their  dead  bodies,  that  the 
rear  may  pass-over  them  dry-shod,  and  gain  the  honor  ?  How 
many  earnest  rugged  Cromwells,  Knoxes,  poor  peasant  cov- 
enanters, wrestling,  battling  for  very  life,  in  rough  miry 
places,  have  to  struggle,  and  suffer,  and  fall,  greatly  censured, 
bemired, — before  a  beautiful  Revolution  of  Eighty-eight  can 
step-over  them  in  official  pumps  and  silk-stockings,  with  uni- 
versal three-times-three  ! 

It  seems  to  me  hard  measure  that  this  Scottish  man,  now 
after  three-hundred  years,  should  have  to  plead  like  a  culprit 
before  the  world ;  intrinsically  for  having  been,  in  such  Avay 
as  it  was  then  possible  to  be,  the  bravest  of  all  Scotchmen  ! 
Had  he  been  a  poor  half-and-half,  he  could  have  crouched 
into  the  corner,  like  so  many  others  ;  Scotland  had  not  been 
delivered  ;  and  Knox  had  been  without  blame.  He  is  the  one 
Scotchman  to  whom,  of  all  others,  his  country  and  the  world 
owe  a  debt.  He  has  to  plead  that  Scotland  would  forgive  him 
for  having  been  worth  to  it  any  million  "unablamable"  Scotch- 
men that  need  no  forgiveness !  He  bared  his  breast  to  the 
battle  ;  had  to  row  in  French  galleys,  wander  forlorn  in  exile, 
in  clouds  and  storms  ;  was  censured,  shot-at  through  his  win- 
dows ;  had  a  right  sore  fighting  life  ;  if  this  world  were  his 
place  of  recompense,  he  had  made  but  a  bad  venture  of  it.  I 
cannot  apologize  for  Knox.  To  him  it  is  very  indifferent, 
these  two-hundred-and-fifty  years  or  more,  what  men  say  of 
him.  But  we,  having  got  above  all  those  details  of  his  battle, 
and  living  now  in  clearness  on  the  fruits  of  his  victory,  we,  for 
our  own  sake,  ought  to  look  thz'ough  the  rumors  and  contro- 
versies enveloping  the  man,  into  the  man  himself. 

For  one  thing,  I  will  remark  that  this  post  of  prophet  to 
his  nation  was  not  of  his  seeking  ;  Knox  had  lived  forty  years 
quietly  obscure,  before  he  became  conspicuous.  He  was  the 
son  of  poor  parents  ;  had  got  a  college  education  ;  become  a 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST. 

priest ;  adopted  the  Reformation,  and  seemed  well  content  to 
guide  las  own  steps  by  the  light  of  it,  nowise  unduly  intrud- 
ing it  on  others.  He  had  li ved  as  tutor  in  gentlemen's  fami- 
lies ;  preaching  when  any  body  of  persons  wished  to  hear  his 
doctrine;  resolute  he  to  walk  by  the  truth,  and  speak  the 
truth  when  caUed  to  do  it ;  not  ambitious  of  more ;  not  fancy- 
ing himself  capable  of  more.  In  this  entirely  obscure  way  he 
had  reached  the  age  of  forty  ;  was  with  the  small  body  of  re- 
formers who  were  standing  siege  in  St.  Andrew's  Castle, — 
when  one  day  in  their  chapel,  the  preacher  after  finishing  his 
exhortation  to  these  fighters  in  the  forlorn  hope,  said  suddenly, 
that  there  ought  to  be  other  speakers,  that  all  men  who  had  a 
priest's  heart  and  gift  in  them  ought  now  to  speak  ;  which 
gifts  and  heart  one  of  their  own  number,  John  Knox  the  name 
of  him,  had  :  Had  he  not  ?  said  the  preacher,  appealing  to  all 
the  audience  :  what  then  is  his  duty  ?  The  people  answered 
affirmatively ;  it  was  a  criminal  forsaking  of  his  post,  if  such  a 
man  held  the  word  that  was  in  him  silent.  Poor  Knox  was 
obliged  to  stand-up  ;  he  attempted  to  reply  ;  he  could  say  no 
word  ; — burst  into  a  flood  of  tears,  and  ran  out  It  is  worth 
remembering,  that  scene.  He  was  in  grievous  trouble  for 
some  days.  He  felt  what  a  small  faculty  was  his  for  this  great 
work.  He  felt  what  a  baptism  he  was  called  to  be  baptized 
withal.  He  "  burst  into  tears." 

Our  primary  characteristic  of  a  hero,  that  he  is  sincere,  ap- 
plies emphatically  to  Knox  It  is  not  denied  anywhere  that 
this,  whatever  might  be  his  other  qualities  or  faults,  is  among 
the  truest  of  men.  With  a  singular  instinct  he  holds  to  the 
truth  and  fact ;  the  truth  alone  is  there  for  him,  the  rest  a 
mere  shadow  and  deceptive  nonentity.  However  feeble,  for- 
lorn the  reality  may  seem,  on  that  and  that  only  can  he  take 
his  stand.  In  the  galleys  of  the  River  Loire,  whither  Knox 
and  the  others,  after  their  Castle  of  St.  Andrew's  was  taken, 
had  been  sent  as  galley-slaves, — some  officer  or  priest,  one 
day,  presented  them  an  image  of  the  Virgin  Mother,  requir- 
ing that  they,  the  blasphemous  heretics,  should  do  it  reverence. 
Mother  ?  Mother  of  God  ?  said  Knox,  when  the  turn  came  to 
him  :  This  is  no  Mother  of  God  :  this  is  "o.pented  bredcl," — 


142  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

a  piece  of  wood,  I  tell  you,  with  paint  on  it !  She  is  fitter  for 
swimming,  I  think,  than  for  being  worshiped,  added  Knox  ;  and 
flung  the  thing  into  the  river.  It  was  not  very  cheap  jesting 
there  :  but  come  of  it  what  might,  this  thing  to  Knox  was  and 
must  continue  nothing  other  than  the  real  truth  ;  it  was  a 
pented  bredd :  worship  it  he  would  not 

He  told  his  fellow-prisoners,  in  this  darkest  time,  to  be  of 
courage  ;  the  cause  they  had  was  the  true  one,  and  must  and 
would  prosper ;  the  whole  world  could  not  put  it  down. 
Reality  is  of  God's  making ;  it  is  alone  strong.  How  many 
pented  bredds,  pretending  to  be  real,  are  fitter  to  swim  than  to 
be  worshiped  ! — This  Knox  cannot  live  but  by  fact :  he  clings 
to  reality  as  the  shipwrecked  sailor  to  the  cliff.  He  is  an  in- 
stance to  us  how  a  man,  by  sincerity  itself,  becomes  heroic  : 
it  is  the  grand  gift  he  has.  We  find  in  Knox  a  good  honest 
intellectual  talent,  no  transcendent  one  ; — a  narrow,  inconsid- 
erable man,  as  compared  with  Luther  :  but  in  heartfelt  in- 
stinctive adherence  to  truth,  in  sincerity,  as  we  say,  he  has  no 
superior ;  nay,  one  might  ask,  what  equal  he  has  ?  The  heart 
of  him  is  of  the  true  prophet  cast  "  He  lies  there,"  said  the 
Earl  of  Morton  at  his  grave,  "who  never  feared  the  face  ot 
man."  He  resembles,  more  than  any  of  the  moderns,  an  old- 
Hebrew  prophet.  The  same  inflexibility,  intolerance,  rigid, 
narrow-looking  adherence  to  God's  truth,  stern  rebuke  in  the 
name  of  God  to  all  that  forsake  truth  :  an  old-Hebrew  prophet 
in  the  guise  of  an  Edinburgh  minister  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. We  are  to  take  him  for  that ;  not  require  him  to  be 
other. 

Knox's  conduct  to  Queen  Mary,  the  harsh  visits  he  used  to 
make  in  her  own  palace,  to  reprove  her  there,  have  been  muck 
commented  upon.  Such  cruelty,  such  coarseness  fills  us  with 
indignation.  On  reading  the  actual  narrative  of  the  business, 
what  Knox  said,  and  what  Knox  meant,  I  must  say  one's 
tragic  feeling  is  rather  disappointed.  They  are  not  so  coarse, 
these  speeches  ;  they  seem  to  me  about  as  fine  as  the  circum- 
stances would  permit !  Knox  was  not  there  to  do  the  cour- 
tier ;  he  came  on  another  errand.  Whoever,  reading  these 
colloquies  of  his  with  the  queen,  thinks  they  are  vulgar  iuso- 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  143 

lences  of  a  plebeian  priest  to  a  delicate  high  lady,  mistakes  the 
purport  and  essence  of  them  altogether.  It  was  unfortunately 
not  possible  to  be  polite  with  the  Queen  of  Scotland,  unless  one 
proved  untrue  to  the  nation  and  cause  of  Scotland.  A  man 
who  did  not  wish  to  see  the  land  of  his  birth  made  a  hunting- 
field  for  intriguing  ambitious  Guises,  and  the  cause  of  God 
trampled  under  foot  of  falsehoods,  formulas  and  the  devil's 
cause,  had  no  method  of  making  himself  agreeable  !  "  Better 
that  women  weep,"  said  Morton,  "  than  that  bearded  men  be 
forced  to  weep."  Knox  was  the  constitutional  opposition- 
party  in  Scotland  :  the  nobles  of  the  country,  called  by  their 
station  to  take  that  post,  were  not  found  in  it ;  Knox  had  to 
go,  or  no  one.  The  hapless  queen  ;  but  the  still  more  hapless 
country,  if  she  were  made  happy  !  Mary  herself  was  not  with- 
out sharpness  enough,  among  her  other  qualities  :  "  Who  are 
you,"  said  she  once,  "  that  presume  to  school  the  nobles  and 
sovereign  of  this  realm?" — "Madam,  a  subject  born  within 
the  same,  "answered  he.  Reasonably  answered  !  If  the  "sub- 
ject "  have  truth  to  speak,  it  is  not  the  "  subject's  "  footing 
that  will  fail  him  here. 

We  blame  Knox  for  his  intolerance.  Well,  surely  it  is 
good  that  each  of  us  be  as  tolerant  as  possible.  Yet,  at  bot- 
tom, after  all  the  talk  there  is  and  has  been  about  it,  what  is 
tolerance  ?  Tolerance  has  to  tolerate  the  wnessential ;  and  to 
see  well  what  that  is.  Tolerance  has  to  be  noble,  measured, 
just  in  its  very  wrath,  when  it  can  tolerate  no  longer.  But, 
on  the  whole,  we  are  not  here  altogether  to  tolerate  !  We  are 
here  to  resist,  to  control  and  vanquish  withal.  We  do  not 
"  tolerate  "  falsehoods,  thieveries,  iniquities,  when  they  fasten 
on  us  ;  we  say  to  them,  Thou  art  false,  thou  art  not  tolerable ! 
We  are  here  to  extinguish  falsehoods,  and  put  an  end  to 
them,  in  some  wise  way  !  I  will  not  quarrel  so  much  with 
the  way ;  the  doing  of  the  thing  is  our  great  concern.  In 
this  sense  Knox  was,  full  surely,  intolerant. 

A  man  sent  to  row  in  French  galleys,  and  suchlike,  for 
teaching  the  truth  in  his  own  land,  cannot  always  be  in  the 
mildest  humor !  I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  Knox  had  a 
soft  temper  ;  nor  do  I  know  that  he  had  what  we  call  an  ill 


144  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

temper.  An  ill  nature  lie  decidedly  had  not.  Kind  honest 
affections  dwelt  in  the  much-enduring,  hard-worn,  ever-bat- 
tling man.  That  he  could  rebuke  queens,  and  had  such 
weight  among  those  proud  turbulent  nobles,  proud  enough 
whatever  else  they  were  ;  and  could  maintain  to  the  end  a 
kind  of  virtual  presidency  and  sovereignty  in  the  wild  realm, 
he  who  was  only  a  "subject  born  within  the  same  :  "  this  of 
itself  will  prove  to  us  that  he  was  found  close  at  hand,  to  be 
no  mean  acrid  man  ;  but  at  heart  a  healthful,  strong,  saga- 
cious man.  Such  alone  can  bear  rule  in  that  kind.  They 
blame  him  for  pulling-down  cathedrals,  and  so  forth,  as  if  he 
were  a  seditious  rioting  demagogue  :  precisely  the  reverse  is 
seen  to  be  the  fact,  in  regard  to  cathedrals  and  the  rest  of  it, 
if  we  examine !  Knox  wanted  no  pulling  down  of  stone 
edifices ;  he  wanted  leprosy  and  darkness  to  be  thrown  out  of 
the  lives  of  men.  Tumult  was  not  his  element ;  it  was  the 
tragic  feature  of  his  h'fe  that  he  was  forced  to  dwell  so  much 
in  that.  Every  such  man  is  the  born  enemy  of  disorder ; 
hates  to  be  in  it :  but  wrhat  then  ?  Smooth  falsehood  is  not 
order  ;  it  is  the  general  sumtotal  of  disorder.  Order  is  truth, 
— each  thing  standing  on  the  basis  that  belongs  to  it :  order 
and  falsehood  cannot  subsist  together. 

Withal,  unexpectedly  enough,  this  Knox  has  a  vein  of  droll- 
ery in  him  ;  which  I  like  much,  in  combination  with  his 
other  qualities.  He  has  a  true  eye  for  the  ridiculous.  His 
history,  with  its  rough  earnestness,  is  curiously  enlivened  with 
this.  When  the  two  prelates,  entering  Glasgow  Cathedral, 
quarrel  about  precedence  ;  march  rapidly  up,  take  to  hustling 
one  another,  twitching  one  another's  rochets,  and  at  last 
flourishing  their  crosiers  like  quarter-staves,  it  is  a  great  sight 
for  him  everyway !  Not  mockery,  scorn,  bitterness  alone  ; 
though  there  is  enough  of  that  too.  But  a  true,  loving,  illu- 
minating laugh  mounts-up  over  the  earnest  visage  ;  not  a 
loud  laugh  ;  you  would  say,  a  laugh  in  the  eyes  most  of  all. 
An  honest-hearted,  brotherly  man  ;  brother  to  the  high, 
brother  also  to  the  low  ;  sincere  in  his  sympathy  with  both. 
He  had  his  pipe  of  Bordeaux  too,  we  find,  in  that  old  Edin- 
burgh house  of  his  ;  a  cheery  social  man,  with  faces  that 


TII^  HERO  AS  PRIEST. 

loved  him !  They  go  far  wrong  who  think  this  Knox  was  a 
gloomy,  spasmodic,  shrieking  fanatic.  Not  at  all :  he  is  one 
of  the  solidest  of  men.  Practical,  cautious-hopeful,  patient ; 
a  most  shrewd,  observing,  quietly  discerning  man.  In  fact, 
he  has  very  much  the  type  of  character  we  assign  to  the 
Scotch  at  present :  a  certain  sardonic  taciturnity  is  in  him  ; 
insight  enough  ;  and  a  stouter  heart  than  he  himself  knows 
of.  He  has  the  power  of  holding  his  peace  over  many  things 
which  do  not  vitally  concern  him, — "They?  what  are  they?" 
But  the  thing  which  does  vitally  concern  him,  that  thing  he 
will  speak  of  ;  and  in  a  tone  the  whole  world  shall  be  made  to 
hear  :  all  the  more  emphatic  for  his  long  silence. 

This  prophet  of  the  Scotch  is  to  me  no  hateful  man ! — He 
had  a  sore  fight  of  an  existence ;  wrestling  with  popes  and 
principalities ;  in  defeat,  contention,  life-long  struggle ;  row- 
ing as  a  galley-slave,  wandering  as  an  exile.  A  sore  fight : 
but  he  won  it.  "  Have  you  hope  "  ?  they  asked  him  in  his  last 
moment,  when  he  could  no  longer  speak.  He  lifted  his  finger, 
"  pointed  upwards  with  his  finger,"  and  so  died.  Honor  to 
him  !  His  works  have  not  died.  The  letter  of  his  work  dies, 
as  of  all  men's  ;  but  the  spirit  of  it  never. 

One  word  more  as  to  the  letter  of  Knox's  work.  The  un- 
forgivable offence  in  him  is,  that  he  wished  to  set-up  priests 
over  the  head  of  kings.  In  other  words,  he  strove  to  make  the 
government  of  Scotland  a  Tlieocracy.  This  indeed  is  properly 
the  sum  of  his  offences,  the  essential  sin  ;  for  which  what  par- 
don can  there  be  ?  It  is  most  true,  he  did,  at  bottom,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  mean  a  theocracy,  or  government 
of  God.  He  did  mean  that  kings  and  prime  ministers,  and 
all  manner  of  persons,  in  public  or  private,  diplomatizing  or 
whatever  else  they  might  be  doing,  should  walk  according  to 
the  Gospel  of  Christ,  and  understand  that  this  was  their  law, 
supreme  over  all  laws.  He  hoped  once  to  see  such  a  thing 
realized ;  and  the  petition,  Tliy  kingdom  come,  no  longer  an 
empty  word.  He  was  sore  grieved  when  he  saw  greedy  wordly 
Barons  clutch  hold  of  the  church's  property  ;  when  he  expost- 
ulated that  it  was  not  secular  property,  that  it  was  spiritual 
property,  and  should  be  turned  to  true  churchly  uses,  edu- 
10 


14:6  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

cation,  schools,  worship  ; — and  the  Eegent  Murray  had  to 
answer,  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  "  it  is  a  devout  imag- 
ination ! "  This  was  Knox's  scheme  of  right  and  truth  ;  this 
he  zealously  endeavored  after,  to  realize  it.  If  we  think  his 
scheme  of  truth  was  too  narrow,  was  not  true,  we  may  rejoice 
that  he  could  not  realize  it ;  that  it  remained  after  two  cen- 
turies of  effort,  unrealizable,  and  is  a  "  devout  imagination  " 
stilL  But  how  shall  we  blame  him  for  struggling  to  realize  it  ? 
Theocracy,  government  of  God,  is  precisely  the  thing  to  be 
struggled  for  !  All  prophets,  zealous  priests,  are  there  for  that 
purpose.  Hildebraud  wished  a  theocracy  ;  Cromwell  wished 
it,  fought  for  it ;  Mohammed  attained  it.  Nay,  is  it  not  what 
ah1  zealous  men,  whether  called  priests,  prophets,  or  what- 
soever else  called,  do  essentially  wish,  and  must  wish  ?  That 
right  and  truth,  or  God's  law,  reign  supreme  among  men, 
this  is  the  heavenly  ideal  (well  named  in  Knox's  time,  and 
namable  in  all  times,  a  revealed  "  Will  of  God  ")  towards  which 
the  reformer  will  insist  that  all  be  more  and  more  approxi- 
mated. All  true  reformers,  as  I  said,  are  by  the  nature  of 
them  priests,  and  strive  for  a  theocracy. 

How  far  such  ideals  can  ever  be  introduced  into  practice, 
and  at  what  point  our  impatience  with  their  non-introduction 
ought  to  begin  is  always  a  question.  I  think  we  may  say 
safely,  let  them  introduce  themselves  as  far  as  they  can  con- 
trive to  do  it !  If  they  are  the  true  faith  of  men,  all  men  ought 
to  be  more  or  less  impatient  always  wiiere  they  are  not  found 
introduced.  There  will  never  be  wanting  Regent-Hurrays 
enough  to  shrug  their  shoulders,  and  say,  "  a  devout  imagina- 
tion ! "  We  will  praise  the  hero-priest  rather,  who  does  what 
is  in  him  to  bring  them  in  ;  and  wears-out,  in  toil,  calumny, 
contradiction,  a  noble  life,  to  make  a  God's  kingdom  of  this 
earth.  The  earth  will  not  become  too  godlike ! 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS. 


LECTUEE  V. 

THE   HERO    AS    MAN    OF    LETTERS.       JOHNSON,    ROUSSEAU,    BURNS. 
[Tuesday,  19th  May,  1840.] 

Hero-gods,  prophets,  poets,  priests  are  forms  of  heroism 
that  belong  to  the  old  ages,  make  their  appearance  in  the  re- 
motest times  ;  some  of  them  have  ceased  to  be  possible  long 
since,  and  cannot  any  more  show  themselves  in  this  world. 
The  hero  as  Man  of  Letters,  again,  of  which  class  we  are  to 
speak  to-day,  is  altogether  a  product  of  these  new  ages ;  and 
so  long  as  the  wondrous  art  of  Writing,  or  of  ready-writing 
which  we  call  Printing,  subsists,  he  may  be  expected  to  con- 
tinue, as  one  of  the  main  forms  of  heroism  for  all  future  ages. 
He  is,  in  various  respects,  a  very  singular  phenomenon. 

He  is  new,  I  say  ;  he  has  hardly  lasted  above  a  century  in 
the  world  yet.  Never,  till  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  was  there 
seen  any  figure  of  a  great  soul  living  apart  in  that  anomalous 
manner  ;  endeavoring  to  speak- forth  the  inspiration  that  was 
in  him  by  printed  books,  and  find  place  and  subsistence  by 
what  the  world  would  please  to  give  him  for  doing  that. 
Much  had  been  sold  and  bought,  and  left  to  make  its  own 
bargain  in  the  marketplace  ;  but  the  inspired  wisdom  of  a 
heroic  soul  never  till  then,  in  that  naked  manner.  He,  with 
his  copy-rights  and  copy-wrongs,  in  his  squalid  garret,  in  his 
rusty  coat ;  ruling  (for  this  is  what  he  does),  from  his  grave, 
after  death,  whole  nations  and  generations  who  would,  or 
would  not,  give  him  bread  while  living, — is  a  rather  curious 
spectacle  !  Few  shapes  of  heroism  can  be  more  unexpected. 

Alas,  the  hero  from  of  old  has  had  to  cramp  himself  into 
strange  shapes :  the  world  knows  not  well  at  any  time  what 
to  do  with  him,  so  foreign  is  his  aspect  in  the  world !  It 
seemed  absurd  to  us,  that  men,  in  their  rude  admiration, 
should  take  some  wise  great  Odin  for  a  god,  and  worship 
him.  as  such  ;  sonic  wise  great  Mohammed  for  one  god-in- 


143  UEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

spired,  and  religiously  follow  Lis  law  for  twelve  centuries ; 
but  that  a  wise  great  Johnson,  a  Burns,  a  Ilousseau,  should 
be  taken  for  some  idle  nondescript,  extant  in  the  world  to 
amuse  idleness,  and  have  a  few  coins  and  applauses  thrown 
him,  that  he  might  live  thereby  ;  this  perhaps,  as  before 
hinted,  will  one  day  seem  a  still  absurder  phasis  of  things  ! — 
Meanwhile,  since  it  is  the  spiritual  always  that  determines  the 
material,  this  same  man-of-letters  hero  must  be  regarded  as 
our  most  important  modern  person.  He,  such  as  he  may  be, 
is  the  soul  of  all.  What  he  teaches,  the  whole  world  will  do 
and  make.  The  world's  manner  of  dealing  with  him  is  the 
most  significant  feature  of  the  world's  general  position.  Look- 
ing well  at  his  life,  we  may  get  a  glance,  as  deep  as  is  readily 
possible  for  us,  into  the  life  of  those  singular  centuries  which 
have  produced  him,  in  which  we  ourselves  live  and  work. 

There  are  genuine  men  of  letters,  and  not  genuine  ;  as  in 
every  kind  there  is  a  genuine  and  a  spurious.  If  hero  be 
taken  to  mean  genuine,  then  I  say  the  hero  as  man  of  letters 
will  be  found  discharging  a  function  for  us  which  is  ever  hon- 
orable, ever  the  highest ;  and  was  once  well  known  to  be  the 
highest.  He  is  uttering-forth  in  such  way  as  he  has,  the  in- 
spired soul  of  him  ;  all  that  a  man,  in  any  case,  can  do.  I 
say  inspired;  for  what  we  call  "originality,"  "sincerity," 
"  genius,"  the  heroic  quality  we  have  no  good  name  for,  sig- 
nifies that.  The  hero  is  he  who  lives  in  the  inward  sphere 
of  things,  in  the  true,  divine  and  eternal,  which  exists  always, 
unseen  to  most,  under  the  temporary,  trivial :  his  being  is  in 
that ;  he  declares  that  abroad,  by  act  or  speech  as  it  may  be, 
in  declaring  himself  abroad.  His  life,  as  we  said  before,  is  a 
piece  of  the  everlasting  heart  of  nature  herself :  all  men's  life 
is, — but  the  weak  may  know  not  the  fact,  and  are  untrue  to 
it,  in  most  times ;  the  strong  few  are  strong,  heroic,  peren- 
nial, because  it  cannot  be  hidden  from  them.  The  man  of 
letters,  like  every  hero,  is  there  to  proclaim  this  in  such  sort 
as  he  can.  Intrinsically  it  is  the  same  function  which  the  old 
generations  named  a  man  prophet,  priest,  divinity  for  doing  ; 
which  all  manner  of  heroes,  by  speech  or  by  act,  are  sent  into 
the  world  to  do. 


THE  IIEllO  AS  AfAy  OF  LETTERS. 

Ficlitc  the  German  philosopher  delivered,  some  forty  years 
ago  at  Erlangeu,  a  highly  remarkable  course  of  lectures  on 
this  subject :  "  Ucber  das  Wesen  des  Gelehrten,  On  the  nature 
of  the  literary  roan."  Fichte,  in  conformity  with  the  trans- 
cendental philosophy,  of  which  he  was  a  distinguished  teacher, 
declares  first :  that  all  things  which  we  see  or  work  with  in 
this  earth,  especially  we  ourselves  and  all  persons,  are  as  a 
kind  of  vesture  or  sensuous  appearance :  that  under  all  there 
lies,  as  the  essence  of  them,  what  he  calls  the  "Divine  idea 
of  the  world  ; "  this  is  the  reality  which  "  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  appearance."  To  the  mass  of  men  no  such  divine  idea  is 
recognizable  in  the  world  ;  they  live  merely,  says  Fichte, 
among  the  superficialities,  practicalities  and  shows  of  the 
world,  not  dreaming  that  there  is  anything  divine  under 
them.  But  the  man  of  letters  is  sent  hither  specially  that  he 
may  discern  for  himself,  and  make  manifest  to  us,  this  same 
divine  idea :  in  every  new  generation  it  will  manifest  itself  in 
a  new  dialect ;  and  he  is  there  for  the  purpose  of  doing  that. 
Such  is  Fichte's  phraseology  ;  with  which  we  need  not  quar- 
rel. It  is  his  way  of  naming  what  I  here,  by  other  words,  am 
striving  imperfectly  to  name  ;  what  there  is  at  present  no 
name  for  :  the  unspeakable  divine  significance,  full  of  splen- 
dor, of  wonder  and  terror,  that  lies  in  the  being  of  every 
man,  of  every  thing, — the  presence  of  the  God  who  made 
every  man  and  thing.  Mohammed  taught  this  in  his  dialect ; 
Odin  in  his  :  it  is  the  thing  which  all  thinking  hearts,  in  one 
dialect  or  another,  are  here  to  teach. 

Fichte  calls  the  man  of  letters,  therefore,  a  prophet,  or  as 
he  prefers  to  phrase  it,  a  priest,  continually  unfolding  the 
godlike  to  men  ;  men  of  letters  are  a  perpetual  priesthood, 
from  age  to  age,  teaching  all  men  that  a  God  is  still  present 
in  their  life  ;  that  all  "appearance,"  whatsoever  we  see  in  the 
world,  is  but  as  a  vesture  for  the  "divine  idea  of  the  world," 
for  "that  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  appearance."  In  the 
true  literary  man  there  is  thus  ever,  acknowledged  or  not  by 
the  world,  a  sacredness ;  he  is  the  light  of  the  world  ; 
the  world's  priest ; — guiding  it,  Like  a  sacred  pillar  of  fire,  in 
its  dark  pilgrimage  through  the  waste  of  time.  Fichte  dis- 


150  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

criminates  with  sharp  zeal  the  true  literary  man,  what  we  here 
call  the  hero  as  man  of  letters,  from  multitudes  of  false  un- 
heroic.  Whoever  lives  not  wholly  in  this  divine  idea,  or  liv- 
ing partially  in  it,  struggles  not,  as  for  the  one  good,  to  live 
wholly  in  it, — he  is,  let  him  live  where  else  he  like,  in  what 
pomps  and  prosperities  he  like,  no  literary  man  ;  he  is,  says 
Fichte,  a  "Bungler,  Stumper."  Or  at  best,  if  he  belong  to 
the  prosaic  provinces,  he  may  be  a  "Hodman  ;"  Fichte  even 
calls  him  elsewhere  a  "  Nonentity,"  and  has  in  short  no  mercy 
for  him,  no  wish  that  he  should  continue  happy  among  us  ! " 
This  is  Fichte's  notion  of  the  man  of  letters.  It  means,  in  its 
own  form,  precisely  what  we  here  mean. 

In  this  point  of  view,  I  consider  that,  for  the  last  hundred 
years,  by  far  the  notablest  of  all  literary  men  is  Fichte's  coun- 
tryman, Goethe.  To  that  man  too,  in  a  strange  way,  there 
was  given  what  we  may  call  a  life  in  the  divine  idea  of  the 
world  ;  vision  of  the  inward  divine  mystery  :  and  strangely, 
out  of  his  books,  the  world  rises  imaged  once  more  as  god- 
like, the  workmanship  and  temple  of  a  God.  Illuminated  all, 
not  in  fierce  impure  fire-splendor  as  of  Mohammed,  but  in 
mild  celestial  radiance  ; — really  a  prophecy  in  these  most  un- 
prophetic  times  ;  to  my  mind,  by  far  the  greatest,  though  one 
of  the  quietest,  among  all  the  great  things  that  have  come  to 
pass  in  them.  Our  chosen  specimen  of  the  hero  as  literary 
man  would  be  this  Goethe.  And  it  were  a  very  pleasant  plan 
for  me  here  to  discourse  of  his  heroism  ;  for  I  consider  him 
to  be  a  true  hero :  heroic  in  what  he  said  and  did,  and  per- 
haps still  more  in  what  he  did  not  say  and  did  not  do  ;  to  me 
a  noble  spectacle  ;  a  great  heroic  ancient  man,  speaking  and 
keeping  silence  as  an  ancient  hero,  in  the  guise  of  a  most 
modern,  high-bred,  high-cultivated  man  of  letters  !  We  have 
had  no  such  spectacle  ;  no  man  capable  of  affording  such,  for 
the  last  hundred-and-fifty  years. 

But  at  present,  such  is  the  general  state  of  knowledge  about 
Goethe,  it  were  worse  than  useless  to  attempt  speaking  of 
him  in  this  case.  Speak  as  I  might,  Goethe,  to  the  great 
majority  of  you,  would  remain  problematic,  vague,  no  impres- 
sion but  a  false  one  could  be  realised.  Him  we  must  leave 


TILS  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  151 

to  future  times.  Johnson,  Burns,  Eousseau,  three  great  fig- 
ures from  a  prior  time,  from  a  far  inferior  state  of  circum- 
stances, will  suit  us  better  here.  Three  men  of  the  eighteenth 
century  ;  the  conditions  of  their  life  far  more  resemble  whs.t 
those  of  ours  still  are  in  England,  than  what  Goethe's  in  Ger- 
many were.  Alas,  these  men  did  not  conquer  like  him  ;  they 
fought  bravely,  and  fell.  They  were  not  heroic  bringers  of 
the  light,  but  heroic  seekers  of  it.  They  lived  under  galling 
conditions  ;  struggling  as  under  mountains  of  impediment, 
and  could  not  unfold  themselves  into  clearness,  or  victorious 
interpretation  of  that  "  divine  idea. "  It  is  rather  the  tombs 
of  three  literary  heroes  I  have  to  show  you.  There  are  the 
monumental  heaps,  under  which  three  spiritual  giants  lie 
buried.  Very  mournful,  but  also  great  and  full  of  interest  for 
us.  We  will  linger  by  them  for  awhile. 

Complaint  is  often  made,  in  these  times,  of  what  we  call 
the  disorganized  condition  of  society  :  how  ill  many  arranged 
forces  of  society  fulfil  their  work  ;  how  many  powerful  forces 
are  seen  working  in  a  wasteful,  chaotic,  altogether  unarranged 
manner.  It  is  too  just  a  complaint,  as  we  all  know.  But 
perhaps  if  we  look  at  this  of  books  and  the  writers  of  books, 
we  shall  find  here,  as  it  were,  the  summary  of  all  other  disor- 
ganization ; — a  sort  of  heart,  from  which,  and  to  which,  all 
other  confusion  circulates  in  the  world  !  Considering  what 
book-writers  do  in  the  world,  and  what  the  world  does  with 
book- writers,  I  should  say,  it  is  the  most  anomalous  thing  the 
world  at  present  has  to  show. — We  should  get  into  a  sea  far 
beyond  sounding,  did  we  attempt  to  give  account  of  this : 
but  we  must  glance  at  it  for  the  sake  of  our  subject.  The 
worst  element  in  the  life  of  these  three  literary  heroes  was, 
that  they  found  their  business  and  position  such  a  chaos.  On 
the  beaten  road  there  is  tolerable  traveling  ;  but  it  is  sore 
work,  and  many  have  to  perish,  fashioning  a  path  through 
the  impassable  ! 

Our  pious  fathers,  feeling  well  what  importance  lay  in  the 
speaking  of  man  to  men,  founded  churches,  made  endow- 
ments, regulations ;  everywhere  in  the  civilized  world  there  is 


152  UEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

a  pulpit,  environed  with  all  manner  of  complex  dignified  ap- 
purtenances and  furtherances,  that  therefrom  a,  man  with  the 
tongue  ma}*,  to  best  advantage,  address  his  fellow-men.  They 
felt  that  this  was  the  most  important  thing  ;  that  without 
this  there  was  no  good  thing.  It  is  a  right  pious  work,  that  of 
theirs  ;  beautiful  to  behold  !  But  now  with  the  art  of  writing, 
with  the  art  of  printing,  a  total  change  has  come  over  that  busi- 
ness. The  waiter  of  a  book,  is  not  he  a  preacher  preaching,  not 
to  this  parish  or  that,  on  this  day  or  that,  but  to  all  men  in  all 
times  and  places  ?  Surely  it  is  of  the  last  importance  that  he  do 
his  work  right,  whoever  do  it  wrong  ;  that  the  eye  report  not 
falsely,  for  then  all  the  other  members  are  astray  !  "Well ;  how 
he  may  do  his  work,  whether  he  do  it  right  or  wrong,  or  do  it 
at  all,  is  a  point  which  no  man  in  the  world  has  taken  the  pains 
to  think  of.  To  a  certain  shop-keeper,  trying  to  get  some 
money  for  his  books,  if  lucky,  he  is  of  some  importance  ;  to 
no  other  man  of  any.  "Whence  he  came,  whither  he  is  bound, 
by  what  ways  he  arrived,  by  what  he  might  be  furthered  on 
his  course,  no  one  asks.  He  is  an  accident  in  society.  He 
wanders  like  a  wild  Ishmaelite,  in  a  world  of  which  he  is  as 
the  spiritual  light,  either  the  guidance  or  the  misguidance  ! 

Certainly  the  art  of  waiting  is  the  most  miraculous  of  all 
things  man  has  devised.  Odin's  "  Runes  "  were  the  first  form 
of  the  work  of  a  hero  ;  books,  written  words,  are  still  miracu- 
lous "Runes  ;"  the  latest  form  !  In  books  lies  the  soul  of  the 
whole  past  time  ;  the  articulate  audible  voice  of  the  past, 
when  the  body  and  mateiial  substance  of  it  has  altogether 
vanished  like  a  dream.  Mighty  fleets  and  armies,  harbors  and 
arsenals,  vast  cities,  high-domed,  many-engined, — they  are 
precious,  ga*eat ;  but  what  do  they  become  ?  Agamemnon,  the 
many  Agamemnons,  Pericleses,  and  their  Greece  ;  all  is  gone 
now  to  some  ruined  fragments,  dumb  mournful  wrecks  and 
blocks :  but  the  books  of  Greece !  There  Greece,  to  every 
thinker,  still  very  literally  lives  ;  can  be  called-up  again  into 
life.  No  magic  "  Rune  "  is  stranger  than  a  book.  All  that 
mankind  has  done,  thought,  gained  or  been  :  it  is  lying  as  in 
magic  preservation  iu  the  pages  of  books.  They  are  the 
chosen  possession  of  man. 


THE  UERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  153 

Do  not  books  still  accomplish  miracles,  as  Runes  were  fabled 
to  do?  They  persuade  men.  Not  the  wretchedest  circula- 
ting-library novel,  which  foolish  girls  thumb  and  con  in  re- 
mote villages,  but  will  help  to  regulate  the  actual  practical 
weddings  and  households  of  those  foolish  girls.  So  "Celia" 
felt,  so  "  Clifford  "  acted  :  the  foolish  theorem  of  life,  stamped 
into  those  young  brains,  comes  out  as  a  solid  practice  one  da}'. 
Consider  whether  any  "  Rune  "  in  the  wildest  imagination  of 
mythologist  ever  did  such  wonders  as,  on  the  actual  firm 
earth,  some  books  have  done  !  What  built  St.  Paul's  Cathe- 
dral ?  Look  at  the  heart  of  the  matter,  it  was  that  divine 
Hebrew  BOOK, — the  word  partly  of  the  man  Moses,  an  outlaw 
tending  his  Midianitish  herds,  four-thousand  years  ago,  in  the 
wildernesses  of  Sinai !  It  is  the  strangest  of  things,  yet  noth- 
ing is  tinier.  With  the  art  of  writing,  of  which  printing  is  a 
simple,  an  inevitable  and  comparatively  insignificant  corollary, 
the  true  reign  of  miracles  for  mankind  commenced.  It  related, 
with  a  wondrous  new  contiguity  and  perpetual  closeness,  the 
past  and  distant  with  the  present  in  time  and  place  ;  all  times 
and  all  places  with  this  our  actual  here  and  now.  All  things 
were  altered  for  men ;  all  modes  of  important  work  of  men  ; 
teaching,  preaching,  governing,  and  all  else. 

To  look  at  teaching,  for  instance.  Universities  are  a  not- 
able, respectable  product  of  the  modern  ages.  Their  exist- 
ence too  is  modified,  to  the  very  basis  of  it,  by  the  existence 
of  books.  Universities  arose  while  there  were  yet  no  books 
procurable  ;  while  a  man,  for  a  single  book,  had  to  give  an 
estate  of  land.  That,  in  those  circumstances,  when  a  man  had 
some  knowledge  to  communicate,  he  should  do  it  by  gather- 
ing the  learners  round  him,  face  to  face,  was  a  necessity  for 
him.  If  you  wanted  to  know  what  Abelard  knew,  you  must 
go  and  listen  to  Abelard.  Thousands,  as  many  as  thirty-thou- 
sand, went  to  hear  Abelard  and  that  metaphysical  theology  of 
his.  And  now,  for  any  other  teacher  whj>  had  also  something 
of  his  own  to  teach,  there  was  a  great  convenience  opened  : 
so  many  thousands  eager  to  learn  were  already  assembled 
yonder  ;  of  all  places  the  best  place  for  him  was  that.  For 
any  third  teacher  it  was  better  still ;  and  grew  ever  the  bet- 


HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

ter,  the  more  teachers  there  came.  It  only  needed  now  that 
the  king  took  notice  of  this  new  phenomenon  ;  combined  or 
agglomerated  the  various  schools  into  one  school ;  gave  it  edi- 
fices, privileges,  encouragements,  and  named  it  Universitas,  or 
school  of  all  sciences  :  the  University  of  Paris,  in  its  essential 
characters,  was  there.  The  model  of  all  subsequent  univer- 
sities ;  which  down  even  to  these  days,  for  six  centuries  now, 
have  gone  on  to  found  themselves.  Such,  I  conceive,  was  the 
origin  of  universities. 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  with  this  simple  circumstance, 
facility  of  getting  books,  the  whole  conditions  of  the  business 
from  top  to  bottom  were  changed.  Once  invent  printing, 
you  metamorphosed  ah1  universities,  or  superseded  them ! 
The  teacher  needed  not  now  to  gather  men  personally  round 
him,  that  he  might  speak  to  them  what  he  knew  :  print  it  in  a 
book,  and  all  learners  far  and  wide,  for  a  trifle,  had  it  each  at 
his  own  fireside,  much  more  effectually  to  learn  it ! — Doubt- 
less there  is  still  peculiar  virtue  in  speech ;  even  writers  of 
books  may  still,  in  some  circumstances,  find  it  convenient  to 
speak  also, — witness  our  present  meeting  here !  There  is, 
one  would  say,  and  must  even  remain  while  man  has  a  tongue, 
a  distinct  province  for  speech  as  well  as  for  writing  and  print- 
ing. In  regard  to  all  things  this  must  remain ;  to  universities 
among  others.  But  the  limits  of  the  two  have  nowhere  yet 
been  pointed  out,  ascertained  ;  much  less  put  in  practice  :  the 
university  which  would  completely  take-in  that  great  new  fact, 
of  the  existence  of  printed  books,  and  stand  on  a  clear  footing 
for  the  nineteenth  century  as  the  Paris  one  did  for  the  thir- 
teenth, has  not  yet  come  into  existence.  If  we  think  of  it,  all 
that  a  university,  or  final  highest  school  can  do  for  us,  is  still 
but  what  the  first  school  began  doing, — teach  us  to  read.  We 
learn  to  read,  in  various  languages,  in  various  sciences  ;  we 
learn  the  alphabet  and  letters  of  all  manner  of  books.  But 
the  place  where  we  ar^to  get  knowledge,  even  theoretic  knowl- 
edge, is  the  books  themselves !  It  depends  on  what  we  read, 
after  all  manner  of  professors  have  done  their  best  for  us. 
The  true  university  of  these  days  is  a  collection  of  books. 

But  to  the  church  itself,  as  I  hinted  already,  all  is  changed, 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      155 

in  its  preaching,  in  its  working,  by  the  introduction  of  books. 
The  church  is  the  working  recognized  union  of  our  priests  or 
prophets,  of  those  who  by  wise  teaching  guide  the  souls  of 
raen.  While  there  was  no  writing,  even  while  there  was  no 
easy- writing  or  printing,  the  preaching  of  the  voice  was  the 
natural  sole  method  of  performing  this.  But  now  with  books ! 
— He  that  can  write  a  true  book,  to  persuade  England,  is  not 
he  the  bishop  and  archbishop,  the  primate  of  England  and  of 
all  England  ?  I  many  a  time  say,  the  writers  of  newspapers, 
pamphlets,  poems,  books,  these  are  the  real  working  effective 
church  of  a  modern  country.  Nay  not  only  our  preaching, 
but  even  our  worship,  is  not  it  too  accomplished  by  means  of 
printed  books  ?  The  noble  sentiment  which  a  gifted  soul  has 
clothed  for  us  in  melodious  words,  which  brings  melody  into 
our  hearts, — is  not  this  essentially,  if  we  will  understand  it, 
of  the  nature  of  worship  ?  There  are  many,  in  all  countries, 
who,  in  this  confused  time,  have  no  other  method  of  worship. 
He  who,  in  any  way,  shows  us  better  than  we  knew  before 
that  a  lily  of  the  fields  is  beautiful,  does  he  not  show  it  us  as 
an  effluence  of  the  fountain  of  all  beauty  ;  as  the  handwriting, 
made  visible  there,  of  the  great  Maker  of  the  universe  ?  He 
has  sung  for  us,  made  us  sing  with  him,  a  little  verse  of  a 
sacred  psalm.  Essentially  so.  How  much  more  he  who  sings, 
who  says,  or  in  any  way  brings  home  to  our  heart  the  noble 
doings,  feelings,  darings  and  endurances  of  a  brother  man  ! 
He  has  verily  touched  our  hearts  as  with  a  live  coal  from  the 
altar.  Perhaps  there  is  no  worship  more  authentic. 

Literature,  so  far  as  it  is  literature,  is  an  "  apocalypse  of 
nature,"  a  revealing  of  the  "  open  secret."  It  may  well  enough 
be  named,  in  Fichte's  style,  a  "  continuous  revelation  "  of  the 
godlike  in  the  terrestrial  and  common.  The  godlike  does 
ever,  in  very  truth,  endure  there  ;  is  brought  out,  now  in 
this  dialect,  now  in  that,  with  various  degrees  of  clearness  : 
all  true  gifted  singers  and  speakers  are,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, doing  so.  The  dark  stormful  indignation  of  a  Byron, 
so  wayward  and  perverse,  may  have  touches  of  it ;  nay  the 
withered  mockery  of  a  French  skeptic, — his  mockery  of  the 
false,  a  love  and  worship  of  the  true.  How  much  more  the 


156  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSIITP. 

sphere-harmony  of  a  Shakespeare,  of  a  Goethe  ;  the  cathedral- 
music  of  a  Milton !  They  are  something  too,  those  humble 
genuine  lark-notes  of  a  Burns, — skylark,  starting  from  the 
humble  furrow,  far  overhead  into  the  blue  depths,  and  sing- 
ing to  us  so  genuinely  there  !  For  all  true  singing  is  of  the 
nature  of  worship  ;  as  indeed  all  true  working  may  be  said  to 
be, — whereof  such  singing  is  but  the  record,  and  fit  melodious 
representation,  to  us.  Fragments  of  a  real "  Church  Liturgy  " 
and  "  Body  of  Homilies,"  strangely  disguised  from  the  common 
eye,  are  to  be  found  weltering  in  that  huge  froth-ocean  of  print- 
ed speech  we  loosely  call  literature ! — Books  are  our  church  too. 
Our  turning  now  to  the  government  of  men.  Witenagemote, 
old  parliament,  was  a  great  thing.  The  affairs  of  the  nation 
were  there  deliberated  and  decided  ;  what  we  were  to  do  as  a 
nation.  But  does  not,  though  the  name  parliament  subsists, 
the  parliamentary  debate  go  on  now,  everywhere  and  at  all 
times,  in  a  far  more  comprehensive  way,  out  of  parliament 
altogether  ?  Burke  said  there  were  three  estates  in  parlia- 
ment ;  but,  in  the  reporter's  gallery  yonder,  there  sat  a  fourth 
estate  more  important  far  than  they  all.  It  is  not  a  figure  of 
speech,  or  a  witty  saying  ;  it  is  a  literal  fact, — very  momentous 
to  us  in  these  times.  Literature  is  our  parliament  too.  Print- 
ing, which  comes  necessarily  out  of  writing,  I  say  often,  is 
equivalent  to  democracy  :  invent  writing,  democracy  is  inevi- 
table. Writing  brings  printing  ;  brings  universal  every-day 
extempore  printing,  as  we  see  at  present.  Whoever  can  speak, 
speaking  now  to  the  whole  nation,  becomes  a  power,  a  branch 
of  government,  with  inalienable  weight  in  law-making,  in  all 
acts  of  authority.  It  matters  not  what  rank  he  has,  what 
revenues  or  garnitures  :  the  requisite  thing  is,  that  he  have  a 
tongue  which  others  will  listen  to  ;  this  and  nothing  more  is 
requisite.  The  nation  is  governed  by  all  that  has  tongue  in 
the  nation  :  democracy  is  virtually  there.  Add  only,  that  what- 
soever power  exists  will  have  itself,  by  and  by,  organized  ;  work- 
ing secretly  under  bandages,  obscurations,  obstructions,  it  will 
never  rest  till  it  get  to  work  free,  unencumbered,  visible  to 
all.  Democracy  virtually  extant  will  insist  on  becoming  pal- 
pably extant. — 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  157 

On  all  sides,  are  we  not  driven  to  the  conclusion  that,  of  the 
things  which  man  can  do  or  make  here  below,  by  far  the  most 
momentous,  wonderful  and  worthy  are  the  things  we  call 
books  ?  Those  poor  bits  of  rag-paper  with  black  ink  on  them  ; 
— from  the  daily  newspaper  to  the  sacred  Hebrew  BOOK,  what 
have  they  not  done,  what  are  they  not  doing ! — For  indeed 
whatever  be  the  outward  form  of  the  thing  (bits  of  paper,  as 
we  say,  and  black  ink),  is  it  not  verily,  at  bottom,  the  highest 
act  of  man's  faculty  that  produces  a  book  ?  It  is  the  thought 
of  man  ;  the  true  thaumaturgic  virtue  ;  by  which  man  works 
all  things  whatsoever.  Ah1  that  he  does,  and  brings  to  pass, 
is  the  vesture  of  a  thought.  This  London  City,  with  all  its 
houses,  palaces,  steam-engines,  cathedrals,  and  huge  immeas- 
urable traffic  and  tumult,  what  is  it  but  a  thought,  but  mill- 
ions of  thoughts  made  into  one  ; — a  huge  immeasurable  spiiit 
of  a  THOUGHT,  embodied  in  brick,  in  iron,  smoke,  dust,  pal- 
aces, parliaments,  hackney  cqaches,  Katherine  docks,  and  the 
rest  of  it !  Not  a  brick  was  made  but  some  man  had  to  think 
of  the  making  of  that  brick. — The  thing  we  called  "bits  of 
paper  with  traces  of  black  ink,"  is  the  purest  embodiment  a 
thought  of  man  can  have.  No  wonder  it  is,  in  all  ways,  the 
activest  and  noblest 

All  this,  of  the  importance  and  supreme  importance  of  the 
man  of  letters  in  modern  society,  and  how  the  press  is  to 
such  a  degree  superseding  the  pulpit,  the  senate,  the  Senatus 
Academicus  and  much  else,  has  been  admitted  for  a  good 
while  :  and  recognized  often  enough,  in  late  times,  with  a  sort 
of  sentimental  triumph  and  wonderment.  It  seems  to  me, 
the  sentimental  by  and  by  will  have  to  give  place  to  the  prac- 
tical. If  men  of  letters  are  so  incalculably  influential,  actually 
performing  such  work  for  us  from  age  to  age,  and  even  from 
day  to  day,  then  I  think  we  may  conclude  that  men  of  letters 
will  not  always  wander  like  unrecognized  unregulated  Ish- 
maelites  among  us  !  Whatsoever  thing,  as  I  said  above,  has 
virtual  unnoticed  power  will  cast  off  its  wrappages,  bandages, 
and  step  forth  one  day  with  palpably  articulated,  universally 
visible  power.  That  one  man  wear  the  clothes,  and  take  the 
wages,  of  a  function  which  is  done  by  quite  another  ;  there 


158  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WOltSlIIP. 

can  be  no  profit  in  this  ;  this  is  not  right,  it  is  wrong.  And 
yet,  alas,  the  making  of  it  right, — -what  a  business,  for  long 
times  to  conie  !  Sure  enough,  this  that  we  call  organization 
of  the  literary  guild  is  still  a  great  way  off,  encumbered  with 
all  manner  of  complexities.  If  you  asked  me  what  were  tho 
best  possible  organization  for  the  men  of  letters  in  modern 
society  ;  the  arrangement  of  furtherance  and  regulation, 
grounded  the  most  accurately  on  the  actual  facts  of  their  po- 
sition and  of  the  world's  position, — I  should  beg  to  say  that 
the  problem  far  exceeded  my  faculty !  It  is  not  one  man's 
faculty  ;  it  is  that  of  many  successive  men  turned  earnestly 
upon  it,  that  will  bring-out  even  an  approximate  solution. 
"\Yliat  the  best  arrangement  were,  none  of  us  could  say.  But  if 
you  ask,  which  is  the  worst  ?  I  answer  :  This  which  we  now 
have,  that  chaos  should  sit  umpire  in  it ;  this  is  the  worst. 
To  the  best,  or  any  good  one,  there  is  yet  a  long  way. 

One  remark  I  must  not  omit,  that  royal  or  parliamentary 
grants  of  money  are  by  no  means  the  chief  thing  wanted  !  To 
give  our  men  of  letters  stipends,  endowments  and  all  further- 
ance of  cash  will  do  little  towards  the  business.  On  the  whole, 
one  is  weary  of  hearing  about  the  omnipotence  of  mone}r.  I 
will  say  rather  that,  for  a  genuine  man,  it  is  no  evil  to  be 
poor ;  that  there  ought  to  be  literary  men  poor, — to  show 
whether  they  are  genuine  or  not !  Mendicant  orders,  bodies 
of  good  men  doomed  to  beg,  were  instituted  in  the  Christian 
Church  ;  a  most  natural  and  even  necessary  development  of 
the  spirit  of  Christianity.  It  was  itself  founded  on  poverty, 
on  sorrow,  contradiction,  crucifixion,  every  species  of  worldly 
distress  and  degradation.  We  may  say,  that  he  who  has  not 
known  those  things,  and  learned  from  them  the  priceless  les- 
sons they  have  to  teach,  has  missed  a  good  opportunit}-  of 
schooling.  To  beg,  and  go  barefoot,  in  coarse  Avoollen  cloak 
with  a  rope  round  your  loins,  and  bo  despised  of  all  the  world, 
was  no  beautiful  business  ; — nor  an  honorable  one  in  any  eye, 
till  the  nobleness  of  those  who  did  so  had  made  it  honored  of 
some  ! 

Begging  is  not  in  our  course  at  the  present  time  :  but  for 
the  rest  of  it,  who  will  say  that  a  Johnson  is  not  perhaps  the 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  159 

better  for  being  poor  ?  It  is  needful  for  him,  at  all  rates,  to 
know  that  outward  profit,  that  success  of  any  kind  is  not  the 
goal  he  has  to  aim  at.  Pride,  vanity,  ill-conditioned  egoism  of 
all  sorts,  are  bred  in  his  heart,  as  in  every  heart ;  need,  above 
all,  to  be  cast-out  of  his  heart, — to  be,  with  whatever  pangs, 
torn-out  of  it,  cast-forth  from  it,  as  a  thing  worthless.  Byron, 
born  rich  and  noble,  made-out  even  less  than  Burns,  poor  and 
plebeian.  Who  knows  but,  in  that  same  "  best  possible  organi- 
zation "  as  yet  far  off,  poverty  may  still  enter  as  an  important 
element  ?  What  if  our  men  of  letters,  men  setting-up  to  be 
spiritual  heroes,  were  still  then,  as  they  now  are,  a  kind  of 
"  involuntary  monastic  order  ; "  bound  still  to  this  same  ugly 
poverty, — till  they  had  tried  what  was  in  it  too,  till  they  had 
learned  to  make  it  too  do  for  them  !  Money,  in  truth,  can  do 
much,  but  it  cannot  do  all.  We  must  know  the  province  of 
it,  and  confine  it  there  ;  and  even  spurn  it  back,  when  it  wishes 
to  get  farther. 

Besides,  were  the  money-furtherances,  the  proper  season  for 
them,  the  fit  assigner  of  them,  all  settled, — how  is  the  Burns 
to  be  recognized  that  merits  these  ?  He  must  pass  through 
the  ordeal,  and  prove  himself.  This  ordeal ;  this  wild  welter 
of  a  chaos  which  is  called  literary  life  ;  this  too  is  a  kind  of 
ordeal !  There  is  clear  truth  in  the  idea  that  a  struggle  from 
the  lower  classes  of  society,  towards  the  upper  regions  and 
rewards  of  society,  must  ever  continue.  Strong  men  are  born 
there,  who  ought  to  stand  elsewhere  than  there.  The  mani- 
fold, inextricably  complex,  universal  struggle  of  these,  consti- 
tutes, and  must  constitute,  what  is  called  the  progress  of  so- 
ciety. For  men  of  letters,  as  for  all  other  sorts  of  men.  How 
to  regulate  that  struggle  ?  There  is  the  whole  question.  To 
leave  it  as  it  is,  at  the  mercy  of  blind  chance  ;  a  whirl  of  dis- 
tracted atoms,  one  cancelling  the  other  ;  one  of  the  thousand 
arrived  saved,  nine-hundred-and-niuety-nine  lost  by  the  way  ; 
your  royal  Johnson  languishing  inactive  in  garrets,  or  har- 
nessed to  the  yoke  of  Printer  Cave  ;  your  Bums  dying  broken- 
hearted as  a  ganger  ;  your  Rousseau  driven  into  mad  exas- 
peration, kindling  French  revolutions  by  his  paradoxes  :  this, 
as  we  said,  is  clearly  enough  the  worst  regulation.  The  best, 


I  GO  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

alas,  is  far  from  us  !  And  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  it  is 
coming ;  advancing  on  us,  as  yet  hidden"  in  the  bosom  of 
centuries  :  this  is  a  prophecy  one  can  risk.  For  so  soon  as 
men  get  to  discern  the  importance  of  a  thing,  they  do  infallibly 
set  about  arranging  it,  facilitating,  forwarding  it ;  and  rest 
not  till,  in  some  approximate  degree,  they  have  accomplished 
that.  I  say,  of  all  priesthoods,  aristocracies,  governing  classes 
at  present  extant  in  the  world,  there  is  no  class  comparable 
for  importance  to  that  priesthood  of  the  writers  of  books. 
This  is  a  fact  which  he  who  runs  may  read, — and  draw  infer- 
ences from.  "  Literature  will  take  care  of  itself,"  answered 
Mr.  Pitt,  when  applied-to  for  some  help  for  Burns.  "  Yes," 
adds  Mr.  Southey,  "it  wiU  take  care  of  itself  ;  and  of  you  too, 
if  you  do  not  look  to  it !  " 

The  result  to  individual  men  of  letters  is  not  the  momen- 
tous one ;  they  are  but  individuals,  an  infinitesimal  fraction 
of  the  great  body  ;  they  can  struggle  on,  and  live  or  else  die, 
as  they  have  been  wont.  But  it  deeply  concerns  the  whole 
society,  whether  it  will  set  its  light  on  high  places,  to  walk 
thereby ;  or  trample  it  under  foot,  and  scatter  it  in  all  ways 
of  wild  waste  (not  without  conflagration),  as  heretofore ! 
Light  is  the  one  thing  Avanted  for  the  world.  Put  wisdom  in 
the  head  of  the  world,  the  world  will  fight  its  battle  victori- 
ously, and  be  the  best  world  man  can  make  it.  I  call  this 
anomaly  of  a  disorganic  literary  class  the  heart  of  all  other 
anomalies,  at  once  product  and  parent ;  some  good  arrange- 
ment for  that  would  be  as  the  punctum  saliens'ol  a  new  vitality 
and  just  arrangement  for  alL  Already,  in  some  European 
countries,  in  France,  in  Prussia,  one  traces  some  beginnings  of 
an  arrangement  for  the  literary  class  ;  indicating  the  gradual 
possibility  of  such.  I  believe  that  it  is  possible  ;  that  it  will 
have  to  be  possible. 

By  far  the  most  interesting  fact  I  hear  about  the  Chinese  is 
one  on  which  we  cannot  arrive  at  clearness,  but  which  excites 
endless  curiosity  even  in  the  dim  state  :  this  namely,  that  they 
do  attempt  to  make  their  men  of  letters  their  governors !  It 
would  be  rash  to  say  one  understood  how  this  was  done,  or  with 
what  degree  of  success  it  was  done.  All  such  things  must  be 


THE  HERO  AS  MA^7   OF  LETTERS.  161 

very  w??successful  ;  yet  a  small  degree  of  success  is  precious ! 
The  very  attempt  how  precious !  There  does  seem  to  be,  all 
over  China,  a  more  or  less  active  search  everywhere  to  dis- 
cover the  men  of  talent  that  grow  up  in  the  young  genera- 
tion. Schools  there  are  for  every  one  :  a  foolish  sort  of  train- 
ing, yet  still  a  sort.  The  youths  who  distinguish  themselves 
in  the  lower  schools  are  promoted  into  favorable  stations  in 
the  higher,  that  they  may  still  more  distinguish  themselves, — 
forward  and  forward :  it  appears  to  be  out  of  these  that  the 
official  persons,  and  incipient  governors,  are  taken.  These 
are  they  whom  they  try  first  whether  they  can  govern  or  not. 
And  surely  with  the  best  hope  :  for  they  are  the  men  that 
have  already  shown  intellect.  Try  them  :  they  have  not  gov- 
erned or  administered  as  yet ;  perhaps  they  cannot ;  but  there 
is  no  doubt  they  have  some  understanding, — without  which 
no  man  can  !  Neither  is  understanding  a  tool,  as  we  are  too 
apt  to  figure  ;  "  it  is  a  hand  which  can  handle  any  tool."  Try 
these  men :  they  are  of  all  others  the  best  worth  trying. — 
Surely  there  is  no  kind  of  government,  constitution,  revolu- 
tion, social  apparatus  or  arrangement,  that  I  know  of  in  this 
world,  so  promising  to  one's  scientific  curiosity  as  this.  The 
man  of  intellect  at  the  top  of  affairs :  this  is  the  aim  of  all 
constitutions  and  revolutions,  if  they  have  any  aim.  For  the 
man  of  time  intellect,  as  I  assert  and  believe  always,  is  the 
noble-hearted  man  withal,  the  true,  just,  humane  and  valiant 
man.  Get  him  for  governor,  all  is  got ;  fail  to  get  him,  though 
you  had  constitutions  plentiful  as  blackberries,  and  a  Parlia- 
ment in  even-  village,  there  is  nothing  yet  got ! — 

These  things  look  strange,  truly  ;  and  are  not  such  as  we 
^commonly  speculate  upon.  But  we  are  fallen  into  strange 
times  ;  these  things  will  require  to  be  speculated  upon  ;  to  be 
rendered  practicable,  to  be  in  some  way  put  in  practice. 
These,  and  many  others.  On  all  hands  of  us,  there  is  the  an- 
nouncement, audible  enough,  that  the  old  empire  of  routine 
has  ended  ;  that  to  say  a  thing  has  long  been,  is  no  reason  for 
its  continuing  to  be.  The  things  which  have  been  are  fallen 
into  decay,  are  fallen  into  incompetence  ;  large  masses  of  man- 
kind, in  every  society  of  our  Europe,  are  no  longer  capable  of 
11 


162  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WOR8IIII'. 

living  at  all  by  the  things  which  have  been.  When  millions 
of  men  can  no  longer  by  their  utmost  exertion  gain  food  for 
themselves,  and  "the  third  man  for  thirty-six  weeks  each  year 
is  short  of  third-rate  potatoes,"  the  things  which  have  been 
must  decidedly  prepare  to  alter  themselves  ! — I  will  now  quit 
this  of  the  organization  of  men  of  letters. 

Alas,  the  evil  that  pressed  heaviest  on  those  literary  1  •. 
of  ours  was  not  the  want  of  organization  for  men  of  letters, 
but  a  far  deeper  one  ;  out  of  which,  indeed,  this  and  HO  many 
other  evils  for  the  literary  man,  and  for  all  men,  had,  as  from 
their  fountain,  taken  rise.     That  our  hero  as  man  of  lei 
had  to  travel  without  highway,  companionless,  through  an  inor- 
ganic chaos, — and  to  leave  his  own  life  arid  faculty  lying  tl, 
as  a  partial  contribution  toward  pushing  some  highway  through 
it :  this,  had  not  his  faculty  itself  been  so  perverted  and  para- 
lyzed, he  might  have  put-up  with,  might  have  considered  to 
be  but  the  common  lot  of  heroes.     His  fatal  misery  was 
t/i'i ritual  paralysis,  so  we  may  name  it,  of  the  age  in  whicL 
life  lay:   whereby  his  life  too,  do  what  lie  might,  was  half- 
paralyzed  !     The  eighteenth  was  a  .»/.  '-/if/'-'d  century ;  in  which 
little  word   there    is  a  whole    Pandora's    box   of    misei 
Skepticism   means   not  intellectual  doubt  alone,  but    moral 
doubt ;   all  sorts  of  infidelity,  insincerity,  spiritual  paralysis. 
Perhaps,  in  few  centuries  that  one  could  specify  since  the 
world  began,  was  a  life  of  heroism  more  difficult  for  a  man. 
That  was  not  an  age  of  faith, — an  age  of  heroes!     The  very 
possibility  of  heroism  had  been,  as  it  were-,   formally  abne- 
gated in  the  minds  of  all     Heroism  was  gone  forever  ;  triv- 
iality, formulism  and  commonplace  were  come  :  The 
"age  of  miracles"  had  been,  or  perhaps  had  not.  been  ;  but  it 
was  not  any  longer.     An  effete  world  ;  wherein  wond< 
ness,  Godhood  could  not  now  dwell ; — in  one  word,  a  godless 
world ! 

How   mean,  dwarfish  are  their  ways  of  thinking,  in  this 
time,— compared  not  with   the  Christian    Shal.< 
Miltons,  but  with  the  old   Pagan  Skalds,  with  any  speci< 
believing  men  !     The  living  TREK  Igdrasil,  with  the  melodious 


THE  HERO  AS  J/.l.V  OF  LETTERS.  163 

prophetic  waving  of  its  world-wide  boughs,  deep-rooted  as 
Hela,  has  died-out  into  the  clanking  of  a  "VYorld-MAcmNE. 
'•  Tree."  and  "Machine:"  contrast  these  two  things.  I,  for 
my  share,  declare  the  world  to  be  no  machine !  I  say  that  it 
does  not  go  by  wheel  and  pinion  "motives,"  self-interests, 
cheeks,  balances  ;  that  there  is  something  far  other  in  it  than 
the  clank  of  spinning-jennies,  and  parliamentary  majorities ; 
and,  on  the  whole,  that  is  not  a  machine  at  all ! — The  old 
Norse  heathen  had  a  truer  notion  of  God's-world  than  these 
poor  machine-skeptics :  the  old  heathen  Norse  were  sincere 
men.  But  for  these  poor  skeptics  there  was  no  sincerity,  no 
truth.  Half-truth  and  hearsay  was  called  truth.  Truth,  for 
most  men,  meant  plausibility ;  to  be  measured  by  the  number 
of  votes  you  could  get.  They  had  lost  any  notion  that  sincer- 
ity was  possible,  or  of  what  sincerity  was.  How  many  plausi- 
bilities asking,  with  unaffected  surprise  and  the  air  of  offended 
virtue.  What !  am  I  not  sincere  ?  Spiritual  paralysis,  I  say, 
nothing  left  but  a  mechanical  life,  was  the  characteristic  of 
that  century.  For  the  common  man,  unless  happily  he  stood 
beloic  his  century  and  belonged  to  another  prior  one,  it  was 
impossible  to  be  a  believer,  a  hero ;  he  lay  buried,  uncon- 
scious, under  these  baleful  influences.  To  the  strongest  man, 
only  with  infinite  struggle  and  confusion  was  it  possible  to 
work  himself  half-loose  ;  and  lead  as  it  were,  in  an  enchanted, 
most  tragical  way,  a  spiritual  death- in-life,  and  be  a  half-hero! 
Skepticism  is  the  name  we  give  to  all  this ;  as  the  chief 
symptom,  as  the  chief  origin  of  all  this.  Concerning  which 
so  much  were  to  be  said  !  It  would  take  many  discourses, 
not  a  small  fraction  of  one  discourse,  to  state  what  one  feels 
about  that  eighteenth  century  and  its  ways.  As  indeed  this, 
and  the  like  of  this,  which  we  now  call  skepticism,  is  precisely 
the  black  malady  and  life-foe,  against  which  all  teaching  and 
discoursing  since  man's  life  began  has  directed  itself  :  the 
battle  of  belief  against  unbelief  is  the  never-ending  battle ! 
Neither  is  it  in  the  way  of  crimination  that  one  would  wish  to 
speak.  Skepticism,  for  that  century,  we  must  consider  as  the 
decay  of  old  ways  of  believing,  the  preparation  afar  off  for 
new,  bettor  and  wider  ways,  —  an  inevitable  thing.  We  will 


164  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

not  blame  men  for  it ;  we  will  lament  their  hard  fate.  We 
will  understand  that  destruction  of  old  forms  is  not  destruction 
of  everlasting  substances;  that  skepticism,  as  sorrowful  and 
hateful  as  we  see  it,  is  not  an  end  but  a  beginning. 

The  other  day  speaking,  without  prior  purpose  that  wny,  of 
Benthani's  theory  of  man  and  man's  life,  I  chanced  to  call  it  a 
more  beggarly  one  than  Mohammed's.  I  am  bound  to  sa;y, 
now  when  it  is  once  uttered,  that  such  is  my  deliberate  opinion. 
Not  that  one  would  mean  offence  against  the  man  Jeremy 
Bentham,  or  those  who  respect  and  believe  him.  Bentham 
himself,  and  even  the  creed  of  Bentham,  seems  to  me  com- 
paratively worthy  of  praise.  It  is  a  determinate  beimj  what 
all  the  world,  in  a  cowardly  half -and-half  manner,  was  tending 
to  be.  Let  us  have  the  crisis  ;  we  shall  either  have  death  or 
the  cure.  I  call  this  gross,  steamengine  utilitarianism  an  ap- 
proach towards  new  faith.  It  was  a  laying  down  of  cant ;  a 
saying  to  oneself  :  "  Well  then,  this  world  is  a  dead  iron  ma- 
chine, the  god  of  it  gravitation  and  selfish  hunger  ;  let  us  see 
what,  by  checking  and  balancing,  and  good  adjustment  of 
tooth  and  pinion,  can  be  made  of  it ! "  Benthamism  has 
something  complete,  manful,  in  such  fearless  commital  of  it- 
self to  what  it  finds  true  ;  you  may  call  it  heroic,  though  a 
heroism  with  its  eyes  put  out !  It  is  the  culminating  point, 
and  fearless  ultimatum,  of  what  lay  in  the  half-and-half  state, 
pervading  man's  whole  existence  in  that  eighteenth  century. 
It  seems  to  me,  all  deniers  of  godhood,  and  all  lip-believers  of 
it,  are  bound  to  be  Benthamites,  if  they  have  courage  and  hon- 
esty. Benthamism  is  an  eyeless  heroism  :  the  human  species, 
like  a  hapless  blinded  Sampson  grinding  in  the  Philistine 
mill,  clasps  convulsively  the  pillars  of  its  mill ;  brings  huge 
ruin  down,  but  ultimately  deliverance  withal.  Of  Beutham  I 
meant  to  say  no  harm. 

But  this  I  do  say,  and  would  wish  all  men  to  know  and  lay 
to  heart,  that  he  who  discerns  nothing  but  mechanism  in  the 
universe  has  in  the  fatalest  way  missed  the  secret  of  the  uni- 
verse altogether.  That  all  godhood  should  vanish  out  of 
men's  conception  of  this  universe  seems  to  me  precisely  the 
most  brutal  error — I  will  not  disparage  heathenism  by  calling 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      165 

it  a  heathen  error — that  men  could  fall  into.  It  is  not  true  ; 
it  is  false  at  the  very  heart  of  it.  A  man  who  thinks  so  will 
think  wrong  about  all  things  in  the  world  ;  this  original  sin 
will  vitiate  all  other  conclusions  he  can  form.  One  might  call 
it  the  most  lamentable  of  delusions — not  forgetting  witchcraft 
itself  !  Witchcraft  worshiped  at  least  a  living  devil ;  but  this 
worships  a  dead  iron  devil ;  no  God,  not  even  a  devil !  What- 
soever is  noble,  divine,  inspired,  drops  thereby  out  of  life. 
There  remains  everywhere  in  life  a  despicable  capul-mortuum  ; 
the  mechanical  hull,  all  soul  fled  out  of  it.  How  can  a  man 
act  heroically?  The  "Doctrine  of  Motives  "  will  teach  him 
that  it  is,  under  more  or  less  disguise,  nothing  but  a  wretched 
love  of  pleasure,  fear  of  pain  ;  that  hunger,  of  applause,  of 
cash,  of  whatsoever  victual  it  may  be,  is  the  ultimate  fact  of 
man's  life.  Atheism,  in  brief ; — which  does  indeed  frightfully 
punish  itself.  The  man,  I  say,  is  become  spiritually  a  paralytic 
man  ;  this  godlike  universe  a  dead  mechanical  steamengine,  all 
working  by  motives,  checks,  balances,  and  I  know  not  what ; 
wherein,  as  in  the  detestable  belly  of  some  Phalaris'  bull  of  his 
own  contriving,  he  the  poor  Phalaris  sits  miserably  dying. 

Belief  I  define  to  be  the  healthy  act  of  a  man's  mind.  It  is 
a  mysterious,  indescribable  process,  that  of  getting  to  believe  ; 
— indescribable,  as  all  vital  acts  are.  We  have  our  mi  ad  given 
us,  not  that  it  may  cavil  and  argue,  but  that  it  may  see  into 
something,  give  us  clear  belief  and  understanding  about  some- 
thing, whereon  we  are  then  to  proceed  to  act.  Doubt,  truly, 
is  not  itself  a  ci'ime.  Certainly  we  do  not  rush  out,  clutch  up 
the  first  thing  we  find,  and  straightway  believe  that !  All 
manner  of  doubt,  inquiry,  O-KC^IS  as  it  is  named,  about  all 
manner  of  objects,  dwells  in  every  reasonable  mind  It  is  the 
mystic  working  of  the  mind,  on  the  object  it  is  getting  to  know 
and  believe.  Belief  comes  out  of  all  this,  above  ground,  like 
the  tree  from  its  hidden  roots.  But  now  if,  even  on  common 
things,  we  require  that  a  man  keep  his  doubt  silent,  and  not 
babble  of  them  till  they  in  some  measure  become  affirmations 
or  denials  ;  how  much  more  in  regard  to  the  highest  things, 
impossible  to  speak-of  in  words  at  all !  That  a  man  parade  his 
doubt  and  get  to  imagine  that  debating  and  logic  (which 


166  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

means  at  best  only  the  manner  of  telling  us  your  thought,  your 
belief  or  disbelief,  about  a  thing)  is  the  triumph  and  true 
work  of  what  intellect  he  has :  alas,  this  is  %s  if  you  should 
overturn  the  tree,  and  instead  of  green  boughs,  leaves  and 
fruits,  show  us  ugly  taloned  roots  turned-up  into  the  air, — 
and  no  growth,  only  death  and  misery  going-on  ! 

For  the  skepticism,  as  I  said,  is  not  intellectual  only  ;  it  is 
moral  also  ;  a  chonic  atrophy  and  disease  of  the  whole  soul. 
A  man  lives  by  believing  something ;  not  by  debating  and 
arguing  about  many  things.  A  sad  case  for  him  when  all  that 
he  can  manage  to  believe  is  something  he  can  button  in  his 
pocket,  and  with  one  or  the  other  organ  eat  and  digest ! 
Lower  than  that  he  will  not  get.  We  call  those  ages  in  which 
he  gets  so  low  the  mournfulest,  sickest  and  meanest  of  all 
ages.  The  world's  heart  is  palsied,  sick  :  how  can  any  limb  of 
it  be  whole  ?  Genuine  acting  ceases  in  all  departments  of  the 
world's  wrork  ;  dextrous  similitude  of  acting  begins.  The 
world's  wages  are  pocketed,  the  world's  work  is  not  done. 
Heroes  have  gone-out ;  quacks  have  come-in.  Accordingly, 
what  century,  since  the  end  of  the  Roman  world,  which  also 
wras  a  time  of  skepticism,  simulacra  and  universal  decadence, 
so  abounds  with  quacks  as  that  eighteenth  ?  Consider  them, 
with  their  tumid  sentimental  vaporing  about  virtue,  benevo- 
lence,— the  wretched  quack-squadron,  Cagliostro  at  the  head 
of  them  !  Few  men  were  without  quackery  ;  they  had  got  to 
consider  it  a  necessary  ingredient  and  amalgam  for  truth. 
Chatham,  our  brave  Chatham  himself,  comes  down  to  the 
house,  all  wrapt  and  bandaged  ;  he  "  has  crawled  out  in  great 
bodily  suffering,"  and  so  on  ;— forgets,  says  Walpole,  that  he  is 
acting  the  sick  man ;  in  the  fire  of  debate,  snatches  his  arm 
from  the  sling,  and  oratorically  swings  and  brandishes  it ! 
Chatham  himself  lives  the  strangest  mimetic  life,  half-hero, 
half-quack,  all  along.  For  indeed  the  world  is  full  of  dupes  ; 
and  you  have  to  gain  the  world's  suffrage  !  How  the  duties 
of  the  world  will  be  done  in  that  case  what  quantities  of 
error,  which  means  failure,  which  means  sorrow  and  misery, 
to  some  and  to  many,  will  gradually  accumulate  in  all  prov- 
inces of  the  world's  business,  we  need  not  compute. 


TUB  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      167 

It  seems  to  me,  you  lay  your  finger  here  on  the  heart  of 
the  world's  maladies,  when  you  call  it  a  skeptical  woild.  An 
insincere  world  ;  a  godless  untruth  of  a  world  !  It  is  out  of 
this,  as  I  consider,  that  the  whole  tribe  of  social  pestilences, 
French  revolutions,  Chartisms,  and  what  not,  have  derived 
their  being, — their  chief  necessity  to  be.  This  must  alter. 
Till  this  alter,  nothing  can  beneficially  alter.  My  one  hope 
of  the  world,  my  inexpungable  consolation  in  looking  at  the 
miseries  of  the  world,  is  that  this  is  altering.  Here  and  there 
one  does  now  find  a  man  who  knows,  as  of  old,  that  this  world 
is  a  truth,  and  no  plausibility  and  falsity  ;  that  he  himself  is 
alive,  not  dead  or  paralytic ;  and  that  the  world  is  alive,  in- 
stinct with  godhood,  beautiful  and  awful,  even  as  in  the  be- 
ginning of  days  !  One  man  once  knowing  this,  many  men, 
all  men,  must  by  and  by  come  to  know  it.  It  lies  there 
clear,  for  whosoever  will  take  the  spectacles  off  his  eyes  and 
honestly  look,  to  know !  For  such  a  man  the  unbelieving 
century,  with  its  unblessed  products,  is  already  past ;  a  new 
century  is  already  come.  The  old  unblessed  products  and 
performances,  as  solid  as  they  look,  are  phantasms,  preparing 
speedily  to  vanish.  To  this  and  the  other  noisy,  very  great- 
looking  simulacrum  with  the  whole  world  huzzahing  at  its 
heels,  he  can  say,  composedly  stepping  aside  :  thou  art  not 
true  ;  thou  art  not  extant,  only  semblant ;  go  thy  way  ! — Yes, 
hollow  formulism,  gross  Benthamism,  and  other  unheroic 
atheistic  insincerity  is  visibly  and  even  rapidly  declining.  An 
unbelieving  eighteenth  century  is  but  an  exception, — such  as 
now  and  then  occurs.  I  prophesy  that  the  world  will  once 
more  become  sincere ;  a  believing  world  ;  with  many  heroes 
in  it,  a  heroic  world  \  It  will  then  be  a  victorious  world  : 
never  till  then. 

Or  indeed  what  of  the  world  and  its  victories  ?  Men  speak 
too  much  about  the  world.  Each  one  of  us  here,  let  the 
world  go  how  it  will,  and  be  victorious  or  not  victorious,  has 
he  not  a  life  of  his  own  to  lead  ?  One  life  ;  a  little  gleam  of 
time  between  two  eternities ;  no  second  chance  to  us  forever- 
more  !  It  were  well  for  us  to  live  not  as  fools  and  simulacra, 
but  as  wise  and  realities.  The  world's  being  saved  will  not 


168  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

save  us  ;  nor  the  world's  being  lost  destroy  us.  We  should 
look  to  ourselves  :  there  is  great  merit  here  in  the  "  duty  of 
staying  at  home  !  "  And,  on  the  whole,  to  say  truth,  I  never 
heard  of  "  worlds  "  being  "  saved  "  in  any  other  way.  That 
mania  of  saving  worlds  is  itself  a  piece  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury with  its  windy  sentimentalism.  Let  us  not  follow  it  too 
far.  For  the  saving  of  the  world  I  will  trust  confidently  to 
the  maker  of  the  world  ;  and  look  a  little  to  my  own  saving, 
which  I  am  more  competent  to ! — In  brief,  for  the  world's 
sake,  and  for  our  own,  wre  will  rejoice  greatly  that  skepticism, 
insincerity,  mechanical  atheism,  with  all  their  poison-dews, 
are  going,  and  as  good  as  gone. — 

Now  it  was  under  such  conditions,  in  those  times  of  John- 
son, that  our  men  of  letters  had  to  live.  Times  in  which 
there  was  properly  no  truth  in  life.  Old  truths  had  fallen 
nigh  dumb ;  the  new  lay  yet  hidden,  not  trying  to  speak. 
That  man's  life  here  below  was  a  sincerity  and  fact,  and  would 
forever  continue  such,  no  new  intimation,  in  that  dusk  of  the 
world,  had  yet  dawned.  No  intimation  ;  not  even  any  French 
revolution, — which  we  define  to  be  a  truth  once  more,  though 
a  truth  clad  in  hellfire  !  How  different  was  the  Luther's  pil- 
grimage, with  its  assured  goal,  from  the  Johnson's,  girt  with 
mere  traditions,  suppositions,  grown  now  incredible,  unin- 
telligible !  Mohammed's  formulas  were  of  "  wood  waxed  and 
oiled,"  and  could  be  burnt  out  of  one's  way  ;  poor  Johnson's 
were  far  more  difficult  to  burn. — The  strong  man  will  ever 
find  work,  which  means  difficulty,  pain,  to  the^ull  measure  of 
his  strength.  But  to  make- out  a  victory,  in  those  circum- 
stances of  our  poor  hero  as  man  of  letters,  was  perhaps  more 
difficult  than  in  any.  Not  obstruction,  disorganization,  book- 
seller Osborne  and  fourpence-halfpenny  a  day  ;  not  this 
alone  ;  but  the  light  of  his  own  soul  was  taken  from  him.  No 
landmark  on  the  earth  ;  and,  alas,  what  is  that  to  having  no 
loadstar  in  the  heaven  !  We  need  not  wonder  that  none  of 
those  three  men  rose  to  victory.  That  they  fought  truly  in 
the  highest  praise.  With  a  mournful  sympathy  we  will  con- 
template, if  not  three  living  victorious  heroes,  as  I  said,  the 
tombs  of  three  fallen  heroes  !  They  fell  for  us  too  ;  making 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  169 

a  way  for  us.  There  are  the  mountains  which  they  hurled 
abroad  iu  their  confused  war  of  the  giants  ;  under  which, 
their  strength  and  life  spent,  they  now  He  buried. 

I  have  already  written  of  these  three  literary  heroes,  express- 
ly or  incidentally  ;  what  I  suppose  is  known  to  most  of  you  ; 
what  need  not  be  spoken  or  written  a  second  time.  They  con- 
cern us  here  as  the  singular  prophets  of  that  singular  age  ;  for 
such  they  virtually  were  ;  and  the  aspect  they  and  their  world 
exhibit,  under  this  point  of  view,  might  lead  us  into  reflec- 
tions enough  !  I  call  them,  all  three,  genuine  men  more  or 
or  less  ;  faithfully,  for  most  part  unconsciously,  struggling  to 
be  genuine,  and  plant  themselves  on  the  everlasting  truth  of 
things..  This  to  a  degree  that  eminently  distinguishes  them 
from  the  poor  artificial  mass  of  their  contemporaries  ;  and 
renders  them  worthy  to  be  considered  as  speakers,  in  some 
measure,  of  the  everlasting  truth,  as  prophets  in  -that  age  of 
theirs.  By  nature  herself  a  noble  necessity  was  laid  on  them 
to  be  so.  They  were  men  of  such  magnitude  that  they  could 
not  live  on  realities, — clouds,  froth  and  all  inanity  gave-way 
under  them  :  there  was  no  footing  for  them  but  on  firm  earth  ; 
no  rest  or  regular  motion  for  them,  if  they  got  not  footing 
there.  To  a  certain  extent,  they  were  sons  of  nature  once 
more  in  an  age  of  artifice  ;  once  more,  original  men. 

As  for  Johnson,  I  have  always  considered  him  to  be,  by  nat- 
ure, one  of  our  great  English  souls.  A  strong  and  noble 
man  ;  so  much  left  undeveloped  in  him  to  the  last :  in. a  kind- 
lier element  what  might  he  not  have  been, — poet,  priest,  sov- 
ereign ruler !  On  the  whole,  a  man  must  not  complain  of  his 
"  element,"  of  his  "  time,"  or  the  like  ;  it  is  thriftless  work  do- 
ing so.  His  time  is  bad :  well  then,  he  is  there  to  make  it 
better ! — Johnson's  youth  was  poor,  isolated,  hopeless,  very- 
miserable.  Indeed,  it  does  not  seem  possible  that,  in  any  the 
favorablest  outward  circumstances,  Johnson's  life  could  have 
been  other  than  a  painful  one.  The  world  might  have  had 
more  of  profitable  work  out  of  him,  or  less  ;  but  his  effort 
against  the  world's  work  could  never  have  been  a  light  one. 
Nature,  in  return  for  his  nobleness,  had  said  to  him,  live  iu 


170  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

an  element  of  diseased  sorrow.  Nay,  perhaps  the  sorrow  and 
the  nobleness  were  intimately  and  even  inseparably  connected 
with  each  other.  At  all  events,  poor  Johnson  had  to  go  about 
girt  with  continual  hypochondria,  physical  and  spiritual  pain. 
Like  a  Hercules  with  the  burning  Nessus'-shirt  on  him,  which 
shoots-in  on  him  dull  incurable  misery  :  the  Nessus'-shirt  not 
to  be  stript-off,  which  is  his  own  natural  skin  ?  In  this  man- 
ner he  had  to  live.  Figure  him  there,  with  his  scrofulous  dis- 
eases, with  his  great  greedy  heart,  and  unspeakable  chaos  of 
thoughts  ;  stalking  mournful  as  a  stranger  in  this  earth  ; 
eagerly  devouring  what  spiritual  thing  he  could  come  at : 
school-languages  and  other  merely  grammatical  stuff,  if  there 
were  nothing  better  !  The  largest  soul  that  was  in  all  England  ; 
and  provision  made  for  it  of  "  fourpence-halfpenny  a  day." 
Yet  a  giant  invincible  soul ;  a  true  man's.  One  remembers 
always  that  story  of  the  shoes  at  Oxford  :  the  rough,  seamy- 
faced,  rawboned  college  servitor  stalking  about,  in  winter-sea- 
son, with  his  shoes  worn-out ;  how  the  charitable  gentleman 
commoner  secretly  places  a  new  pair  at  his  door ;  and  the 
rawboned  servitor,  lifting  them,  looking  at  them  near,  with 
his  dim  eyes,  with  what  thoughts, — pitches  them  out  of  win- 
dow !  Wet  feet,  mud,  frost,  hunger  or  what  you  will ;  but 
not  beggary  :  we  cannot  stand  beggary7 !  Rude  stubborn  self- 
help  here  ;  a  whole  world  of  squalor,  rudeness,  confused  mis- 
ery and  want,  yet  of  nobleness  and  manfulness  withal.  It  is  a 
type  of  the  man's  life,  this  pitchiug-away  of  the  shoes.  An 
original  man  ; — not  a  secondhand,  borrowing  or  begging  man. 
Let  us  stand  on  our  own  basis,  at  any  rate  !  On  such  shoes 
as  we  ourselves  can  get.  On  frost  and  mud,  if  you  will,  but 
honestly  on  that; — on  the  reality  and  substance  which  nature 
gives  us,  not  on  the  semblance,  on  the  thing  she  has  given 
another  than  us  ! — 

And  yet  with  all  this  rugged  pride  of  manhood  and  self- 
help,  was  there  ever  soul  more  tenderly  affectionate,  loyally 
submissive  to  what  was  really  higher  than  he  ?  Great  souls 
are  always  loyally  submissive,  reverent  to  what  is  over  them  ; 
only  small  mean  souls  are  otherwise.  I  could  not  find  a  better 
proof  of  what  I  said  the  other  day,  that  the  sincere  man  was 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      171 

by  nature  the  obedient  man  ;  that  only  in  a  world  of  heroes 
was  there  loyal  obedience  to  the  heroic.  The  essence  of 
originality  is  not  that  it  be  new  :  Johnson  believed  altogether 
in  the  old  ;  he  found  the  old  opinions  creditable  for  him,  fit 
for  him  :  and  in  a  right  heroic  manner  lived  under  them.  He 
is  well  worth  study  in  regard  to  that.  For  we  are  to  say  that 
Johnson  was  far  other  than  a  mere  man  of  words  and  formu- 
las ;  he  was  a  man  of  truths  and  facts.  He  stood  by  the  old 
formulas  ;  the  happier  was  it  for  him  that  he  could  so  stand  : 
but  in  ah1  formulas  that  he  could  stand  by,  there  needed  to  be 
a  most  genuine  substance.  Very  curious  how,  in  that  poor 
paper-age,  so  barren,  artificial,  thick-quilted  with  pedantries, 
hearsays,  the  great  fact  of  this  universe  glared  in,  forever  won- 
derful, indubitable,  unspeakable,  divine-infernal,  upon  this 
man  too  !  How  he  harmonized  his  formulas  with  it,  how  he 
managed  it  all  under  such  circumstances :  that  is  a  thing 
worth  seeing.  A  thing  "  to  be  looked  at  with  reverence,  with 
pity,  with  awe."  That  church  of  St.  Clement  Danes,  where 
Johnson  still  worshiped  in  the  era  of  Voltaire,  is  to  me  a  ven- 
erable place. 

It  was  in  virtue  of  his  sincerity,  of  his  speaking  still  in  some 
sort  from  the  heart  of  nature,  though  in  the  current  artificial 
dialect,  that  Johnson  was  a  prophet  Are  not  all  dialects 
"  artificial  ?  "  Artificial  things  are  not  all  false ; — nay  every 
true  product  of  nature  will  infallibly  shape  itself  ;  we  may  say 
all  artificial  things  are,  at  the  starting  of  them,  true.  What 
we  call  "formulas"  are  not  in  their  origin  bad;  they  are 
indispensably  good.  Formula  is  method,  habitude ;  found 
wherever  man  is  found.  Formulas  fashion  themselves  as  paths 
do,  as  beaten  highways,  leading  toward  some  sacred  or  high 
object,  whither  many  men  are  bent.  Consider  it.  One  man, 
full  of  heartfelt  earnest  impulse,  finds-out  a  way  of  doing  some- 
what,— were  it  of  uttering  his  soul's  reverence  fer  the  highest, 
were  it  but  of  fitly  saluting  his  fellow-man.  An  inventor  was 
needed  to  do  that,  a  poet  ;  he  has  articulated  the  dim  strug- 
gling thought  that  dwelt  in  his  own  and  many  hearts.  This 
is  his  way  of  doing  that ;  these  are  his  footsteps,  the  begin- 
ning of  a  "path."  And  now  see  :  the  second  man  travels  nat- 


172  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

u  rally  in  the  footsteps  of  Ins  foregoer,  it  is  the  easiest  method. 
In  the  footsteps  of  his  foregoer ;  yet  with  improvements,  with 
changes  where  such  seem  good  ;  at  all  events  with  enlarge- 
ments, the  path  ever  widening  itself  as  more  travel  it ; — till  at 
last  there  is  a  broad  highway  whereon  the  whole  world  may 
travel  and  drive.  While  there  remains  a  city  or  shrine,  or  any 
reality  to  drive  to,  at  the  farther  end,  the  highway  shall  be 
right  welcome  !  When  the  city  is  gone,  we  will  forsake  the 
highway.  In  this  manner  all  institutions,  practices,  regulated 
things  in  the  world  have  come  into  existence,  and  gone  out  of 
existence.  Formulas  all  begin  by  being  fall  of  substance  ; 
you  may  call  them  the  skin,  the  articulation  into  shape  ;  into 
limbs  and  skin,  of  a  substance  that  is  already  there  :  they  had 
not  been  there  otherwise.  Idols,  as  we  said,  are  not  idola- 
trous till  they  become  doubtful,  empty  for  the  worshiper's 
heart.  Much  as  we  talk  against  formulas,  I  hope  no  one  of  us 
is  ignorant  withal  of  the  high  significance  of  true  formulas  ; 
that  they  were,  and  will  ever  be,  the  indispensablest  furniture 

of  our  habitation  in  this  world. 

Mark,  too,  how  little  Johnson  boasts  of  his  "sincerity." 
He  has  no  suspicion  of  his  being  particularly  sincere, — of  his 
being  particularly  anything !  A  hard-struggling,  weary-hearted 
man,  or  "  scholar"  as  he  calls  himself,  trying  hard  to  get  some 
honest  livelihood  in  the  world,  not  to  starve,  but  to  live — 
without  stealing !  A  noble  unconsciousness  is  in  him.  He 
does  not  "  engrave  truth  on  his  watch-seal ; "  no,  but  he  stands 
by  truth,  speaks  by  it,  works  and  lives  by  it.  Thus  it  ever  is. 
Think  of  it  once  more.  The  man  whom  nature  has  appointed 
to  do  great  things  is,  first  of  all,  furnished  with  that  openness 
to  nature  which  renders  him  incapable  of  being  insincere ! 
To  his  large,  open,  deep-feeling  heart  nature  is  a  fact ;  all 
hearsay  is  hearsay  ;  the  unspeakable  greatness  of  this  mystery 
of  life,  let  him  acknowledge  it  or  not,  nay  even  though  he 
seem  to  forget  it  or  deny  it,  is  ever  present  to  him, — fearful 
and  wonderful,  on  this  hand  and  on  that.  He  has  a  basis  of 
sincerity  ;  unrecognized,  because  never  questioned  or  capable 
of  question.  Mirabean,  Mohammed,  Cromwell,  Napoleon  :  all 
the  great  men  I  ever  heurd-of  have  this  as  the  primary  material 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      173 

of  them.  Innumerable  commonplace  men  are  debating,  are 
talking  everywhere  their  commonplace  doctrines,  which  they 
have  learned  by  logic,  by  rote,  at  secondhand  :  to  that  kind 
of  man  all  this  is  still  nothing.  He  must  have  truth  ;  truth 
which  he  feels  to  be  true.  How  shall  he  stand  otherwise  ? 
His  whole  soul,  at  all  moments,  in  all  ways,  tells  him  that 
there  is  no  standing.  He  is  under  the  noble  necessity  of  being 
true.  Johnson's  way  of  thinking  about  this  world  is  not  mine, 
any  more  than  Mohammed's  was  :  but  I  recognize  the  ever- 
lasting element  of  heart-sincerity  in  both  :  and  see  with  pleas- 
ure how  neither  of  them  remains  ineffectual  Neither  of  them 
is  as  chaff  sown ;  in  both  of  them  is  something  which  the 
seed-field  will  grow. 

Johnson  was  a  prophet  to  his  people  ;  preached  a  gospel  to 
them, — as  all  like  him  always  do.  The  highest  gospel  he 
preached  we  may  describe  as  a  kind  of  moral  prudence  :  "in 
a  world  where  much  is  to  be  done,  and  little  is  to  be  known,'' 
see  how  you  will  do  it !  'A  thing  well  worth  preaching.  "A 
world  where  much  is  to  be  done,  and  little  is  to  bo  known  : " 
do  not  sink  yourselves  in  boundless  bottomless  abysses  of 
doubt,  of  wretched  god-forgetting  unbelief ;  you  were  miser- 
able then,  powerless,  mad  :  how  could  you  do  or  work  at  all  ? 
Such  gospel  Johnson  preached  and  taught ; — coupled,  theo- 
retically and  practically,  with  this  other  great  gospel,  "Clear 
your  mind  of  cant !  "  Have  no  trade  with  cant :  stand  on  the 
cold  mud  in  the  frosty  weather,  but  let  it  be  in  your  own  real 
torn  shoes  :  "  that  will  be  better  for  you,"  as  Mohammed  says ! 
I  call  this,  I  call  these  two  things  joined  together,  a  great  gos- 
pel, the  greatest  perhaps  that  was  possible  at  that  time. 

Johnson's  writings,  which  once  had  such  currency  and  ce- 
lebrity, are  now,  as  it  were,  disowned  by  the  young  generation. 
It  is  not  wonderful ;  Johnson's  opinions  are  fast  becoming  ob- 
solete :  but  his  style  of  thinking  and  of  living,  we  may  hope, 
will  never  become  obsolete.  I  find  in  Johnson's  books  the 
indisputablest  traces  of  a  great  intellect  and  great  heart ; — 
ever  welcome,  under  what  obstructions  and  perversions  soever. 
They  are  sincere  words,  those  of  his ;  he  means  things  by 
them.  A  wondrous  buckram  style, — the  best  he  could  get  to 


174  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

then  ;  a  measured  grandiloquence,  stepping  or  rather  stalk- 
ing along  in  a  very  solemn  way,  grown  obsolete  now  ;  some- 
times a  tumid  size  of  phraseology  not  in  proportion  to  the 
contents  of  it :  all  this  you  will  put-up  with.  For  the  phrase- 
ology, tumid  or  not,  has  always  something  within  it.  So  many 
beautiful  styles  and  books,  with  nothing  in  them  ;  a  man  is  a 
??iafefactor  to  the  world  who  writes  such !  They  are  the  avoid- 
able kind  ! — Had  Johnson  left  nothing  but  his  dictionary,  one 
might  have  traced  there  a  great  intellect,  a  genuine  man. 
Looking  to  its  clearness  of  definition,  its  general  solidity,  hon- 
esty, insight  and  successful  method,  it  may  be  called  the  best 
of  all  dictionaries.  There  is  in  it  a  kind  of  architectural  no- 
bleness ;  it  stands  there  like  a  great  solid  square-built  edifice, 
finished,  symmetrically  complete  :  you  judge  that  a  true  build- 
er did  it. 

One  word,  in  spite  of  our  haste,  must  be  granted  to  poor 
Bozzy.  He  passes  for  a  mean,  inflated,  gluttonous  creature  ; 
and  was  so  in  many  senses.  Yet  tlie  fact  of  his  reverence  for 
Johnson  will  ever  remain  noteworthy.  The  foolish  conceited 
Scotch  Laird,  the  most  conceited  man  of  his  time,  approach- 
ing in  such  awestruck  attitude  the  great  dusty  irascible  peda- 
gogue in  his  mean  garret  there  :  it  is  a  genuine  reverence  for 
excellence  ;  a  worship  for  heroes,  at  a  time  when  neither 
heroes  nor  worship  were  surmised  to  exist.  Heroes,  it  would 
seem,  exist  always,  and  a  certain  worship  of  them  !  We  will 
also  take  the  liberty  to  deny  altogether  that  of  the  witty 
Frenchman,  that  no  man  is  a  hero  to  his  valet-de-chambre. 
Or  if  so,  it  is  not  the  hero's  blame,  but  the  valet's  :  that  his 
soul,  namely,  is  a  mean  valel-soul !  He  expects  his  hero  to 
advance  in  royal  stage-trappings,  with  measured  step,  trains 
borne  behind  him,  trumpets  sounding  before  him.  It  should 
stand  rather,  No  man  can  be  a  grand-monarque  to  his  valet-de- 
chambre.  Strip  your  Louis  Quatorze  of  his  king-gear,  and 
there  is  left  nothing  but  a  poor  forked  radish  with  a  head 
fantastically  carved  ; — admirable  to  no  valet.  The  valet  does 
not  know  a  hero  when  he  sees  him !  Alas,  no  :  it  requires  a 
kind  of  hero  to  do  that ; — and  one  of  the  world's  wants,  in 
this  as  in  other  senses,  is  for  most  part  want  of  such. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      175 

On  the  whole,  shall  we  not  say,  that  Boswell's  admiration 
was  well  bestowed  ;  that  he  could  have  found  no  soul  in  all 
England  so  worthy  of  bending  down  before  ?  Shall  we  not 
say,  of  this  great  mournful  Johnson  too,  that  he  guided  his 
difficult  confused  existence  wisely  ;  led  it  well,  like  a  right- 
valiant  man?  That  waste  chaos  of  authorship  by  trade  ;  that 
waste  chaos  of  skepticism  in  religion  and  politics,  in  life- 
theory  and  life-practice  ;  in  his  poverty,  in  his  dust  and  dim- 
ness, with  the  sick  body  and  the  rasty  coat :  he  made  it  do 
for  him,  like  a  brave  man.  Not  wholly  without  a  loadstar  in 
the  eternal ;  he  had  still  a  loadstar,  as  the  brave  all  need  to 
have  :  with  his  eye  set  on  that,  he  would  change  his  course 
for  nothing  in  these  confused  vortices  of  the  lower  sea  of  time. 
"  To  the  spirit  of  lies,  bearing  death  and  hunger,  he  would  in 
no  wise  strike  his  flag."  Brave  old  Samuel :  ultimus  Ro~ 
manorum  ! 

Of  Rousseau  and  his  heroism  I  cannot  say  so  much.  He  is 
not  what  I  call  a  strong  man.  A  morbid,  excitable,  spasmodic 
man  ;  at  best,  intense  rather  than  strong.  He  had  not  the 
"  talent  of  silence,"  an  invaluable  talent ;  which  few  French- 
men, or  indeed  men  of  any  sort  in  these  times,  excel  in !  The 
suffering  man  ought  really  "to  consume  his  own  smoke;" 
there  is  no  good  in  emitting  smoke  till  you  have  made  it  into 
fire, — which,  in  the  metaphorical  sense  too,  all  smoke  is 
capable  of  becoming  !  Rousseau  has  not  depth  or  width,  not 
calm  force  for  difficulty  ;  the  first  characteristic  of  true  great- 
ness. A  fundamental  mistake  to  call  vehemence  and  rigidity 
strength !  A  man  is  not  strong  wiio  takes  convulsion  fits  ; 
though  six  men  cannot  hold  him  then.  He  that  can  walk 
under  the  heaviest  weight  without  staggering,  he  is  the 
strong  man.  We  need  forever,  especially  in  these  loud- 
shrieking  days,  to  remind  ourselves  of  that.  A  man  who  can- 
not hold  his  peace,  till  the  time  come  for  speaking  and  acting, 
is  no  right  man. 

Poor  Rousseau's  face  is  to  me  expressive  of  him.  A  high 
but  narrow  contracted  intensity  in  it :  bony  brows  ;  deep, 
strait-set  eyes,  in  which  there  is  something  bewildered-look- 


176  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

ing, — bewildered,  peering  with  lynx-eagerness.  A  face  full  of 
misery,  even  ignoble  miser}',  and  also  of  the  antagonism 
against  that ;  something  mean,  plebeian  there,  redeemed  only 
by  intensity  :  the  face  of  what  is  called  a  fanatic, — a  sadly 
contracted  hero !  We  name  him  here  because,  with  all  his 
drawbacks,  and  they  are  many,  he  has  the  first  and  chief 
characteristic  of  a  hero  :  he  is  heartily  in  earnest.  In  earnest, 
if  ever  man  was  ;  as  none  of  these  French  philosophers  were. 
Nay,  one  would  say,  of  an  earnestness  too  great  for  his  other- 
wise sensitive,  rather  feeble  nature  ;  and  which  indeed  in  the 
end  drove  him  into  the  strangest  incoherences,  almost  delira- 
tions.  There  had  come,  at  last,  to  be  a  kind  of  madness  in 
him  :  his  ideas  possessed  him  like  demons  ;  hurried  him  so 
about,  drove  him  over  steep  places  ! — 

The  fault  and  misery  of  Rousseau  was  what  we  easily  name 
by  a  single  word,  egoism  ;  which  is  indeed  the  source  and 
summary  of  all  faults  and  miseries  whatsoever.  He  had  not 
perfected  himself  into  victory  over  mere  desire  ;  a  mean 
hunger,  in  many  sorts,  was  still  the  motive  principle  of  him. 
I  am  afraid  he  was  a  very  vain  man  ;  hungry  for  the  praises 
of  men.  You  remember  Genlis's  experience  of  him.  She 
took  Jean  Jacques  to  the  theater :  he  bargaining  for  a  strict 
incognito, — "  He  would  not  be  seen  there  for  the  world  !  " 
The  curtain  did  happen  nevertheless  to  be  drawn  aside :  the 
pit  recognized  Jean  Jacques, but  took  no  great  notice  of  him ! 
He  expressed  the  bitterest  indignation  ;  gloomed  all  evening, 
spake  no  other  than  surly  words.  The  glib  Countess  re- 
mained entirely  convinced  that  his  anger  was  not  at  being 
seen,  but  at  not  being  applauded  when  seen.  How  the  whole 
nature  of  the  man  is  poisoned  ;  nothing  but  suspicion,  self-iso- 
lation, fierce  moody  ways  !  He  could  not  live  with  anybody. 
A  man  of  some  rank  from  the  country,  who  visited  him  often, 
and  used  to  sit  with  him,  expressing  all  reverence  and  affec- 
tion for  him,  comes  one  day ;  finds  Jean  Jacques  full  of  the 
sourest  unintelligible  humor,  "Monsieur,"  said  Jean  Jacques, 
with  flaming  eyes,  "I  know  why  you  come  here.  You  come  to 
see  what  a  poor  life  I  lead  ;  how  little  is  in  my  poor  pot  that 
is  boiling  there.  Well,  look  into  the  pot !  There  is  half  a 


THE  UEHO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      177 

pound  of  meat,  one  carrot  and  three  onions ;  that  is  all :  go 
and  tell  the  whole  world  that,  if  you  like,  Monsieur ! " — A 
man  of  this  sort  was  far  gone.  The  whole  world  got  itself 
supplied  with  anecdotes,  for  light  laughter,  for  a  certain  the- 
atrical interest,  from  these  perversions  and  contortions  of 
poor  Jean  Jacques.  Alas,  to  him  they  were  not  laughing  or 
theatrical  ;  too  real  to  him !  The  contortions  of  a  dying 
gladiator  :  the  crowded  amphitheater  looks-ou  with  entertain- 
ment ;  but  the  gladiator  is  in  agonies  and  dying. 

And  yet  this  Rousseau,  as  we  say,  with  his  passionate  ap- 
peals to  mothers,  with  his  contrat- social,  with  his  celebrations 
of  nature,  even  of  savage  life  in  nature,  did  once  more  touch 
upon  reality,  struggle  towards  reality  ;  was  doing  the  func- 
tion of  a  prophet  to  his  time.  As  he  could,  and  as  the  time 
could  !  Strangely  through  all  that  defacement,  degradation 
and  almost  madness,  there  is  in  the  inmost  heart  of  poor 
Rousseau  a  spark  of  real  heavenly  fire.  Once  more,  out  of 
the  element  of  that  withered  mocking  philosophism,  skepti- 
cism and  persiflage,  there  has  arisen  in  this  man  the  ineradi- 
cable f eeling  and  knowledge  that  this  life  of  ours  is  true  ;  not  a 
skepticism,  theorem,  or  persiflage,  but  a  fact,  an  awful  reality. 
Nature  had  made  that  revelation  to  him  ;  had  ordered  him  to 
speak  it  out.  He  got  it  spoken  out ;  if  not  -well  and  clearly, 
then  ill  and  dimly, — as  clearly  as  he  could.  Nay  what  are  all 
errors  and  perversities  of  his,  even  those  stealings  of  ribbons, 
aimless  confused  miseries  and  vagabondisms^  if  we  will  inter- 
pret them  kindly,  but  the  bliukard  dazzlement  and  stagger- 
ing to  and  fro  of  a  man  sent  on  an  errand  he  is  too  weak  for, 
by  a  path  he  cannot  yet  find  ?  Men  are  led  by  strange  ways. 
One  should  have  tolerance  for  a  man,  hope  of  him  ;  leave  him 
to  try  yet  what  he  will  do.  While  life  lasts,  hope  lasts  for 
every  man. 

Of  Rousseau's  literary  talents,  greatly  celebrated  still  among 
his  countrymen,  I  do  not  say  much.  His  books,  like  him- 
self, are  what  I  call  unhealthy  ;  not  the  good  sort  of  books. 
There  is  a  sensuality  in  Rousseau.  Combined  with  such  an 
intellectual  gift  as  his,  it  makes  pictures  of  a  certain  gorgeous 
attractiveness :  but  they  are  not  genuinely  poetical.  Not 
12 


178  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

white  sunlight :  something  operatic  ;  a  kind  of  rosepink,  arti- 
ficial bedizenment.  It  is  frequent,  or  rather  it  is  universal, 
among  the  French  since  his  time.  Madame  de  Stae'l  has 
something  of  it ;  St.  Pierre  ;  and  down  onwards  to  the 
present  astonishing  convulsionary  "  literature  of  despera- 
tion," it  is  everywhere  abundant.  That  same  rosepink  is  not 
the  right  hue.  Look  at  a  Shakespeare,  at  a  Goethe,  even  at  a 
Walter  Scott !  He  who  has  once  seen  into  this,  has  seen  the 
difference  of  the  true  from  the  sham-true,  and  will  discrimi- 
nate them  ever  afterwards. 

"VVe  had  to  observe  in  Johnson  how  much  good  a  prophet, 
under  all  disadvantages  and  disorganizations,  can  accomplish 
for  the  world.  In  Kousseau  we  are  called  to  look  rather  at 
the  fearful  amount  of  evil  which,  under  such  disorganization, 
may  accompany  the  good.  Historically  it  is  a  most  pregnant 
spectacle,  that  of  Rousseau.  Banished  into  Paris  garrets, 
in  the  gloomy  company  of  his  own  thoughts  and  necessities 
there  ;  driven  from  post  to  pillar  ;  fretted,  exasperated  till 
the  heart  of  him  went  mad,  he  had  grown  to  feel  deeply  that 
the  world  was  not  his  friend  nor  the  world's  law.  It  was 
expedient,  if  anyway  possible,  that  such  a  man  should  not 
have  been  set  in  flat  hostility  with  the  world.  He  could  be 
cooped  into  garrets,  laughed  at  as  a  maniac,  left  to  starve  like 
a  wild-beast  in  his  cage  ; — but  he  could  not  be  hindered  from 
setting  the  world  on  fire.  The  French  Eevolution  found  its 
evangelist  in  Rousseau.  His  semi-delirious  speculations  on  the 
miseries  of  civilized  life,  the  preferability  of  the  savage  to  the 
civilized,  and  suchlike,  helped  well  to  produce  a  whole  de- 
lirium in  France  generally.  ,  True,  you  may  well  ask,  What 
could  the  world,  the  governors  of  the  world,  do  with  such  a 
man  ?  Difficult  to  say  what  the  governors  of  the  world  could 
do  with  him  !  WThat  he  could  do  with  them  is  unhappily 
clear  enough, — guillotine  a  great  many  of  them !  Enough 
BOW  of  Rousseau. 

It  was  a  curious  phenomenon,  in  the  withered,  unbelieving, 
second-hand  eighteenth  century,  that  of  a  hero  starting  up, 
among  the  artificial  pasteboard  figures  and  productions,  in 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      179 

the  guise  of  a  Robert  Burns.  Like  a  little  well  in  the  rocky 
desert  places, — like  a  sudden  splendor  of  heaven  in  the  arti- 
ficial Vauxhall !  People  knew  not  what  to  make  of  it.  They 
took  it  for  a  piece  of  the  Vauxhall  firework  :  alas,  it  let  itself 
be  so  taken,  though  struggling  half-blindly,  as  in  bitterness 
of  death,  against  that !  Perhaps  no  man  had  such  a  false 
reception  from  his  fellow-men.  Once  more  a  very  wasteful 
life-drama  was  enacted  under  the  sun. 

The  tragedy  of  Burns's  life  is  known  to  all  of  you.  Surely 
we  may  say,  if  discrepancy  between  place  held  and  place 
merited  constitute  perverseness  of  lot  for  a  man,  no  lot  could 
be  more  perverse  than  Burns's.  Among  those  secondhand 
acting-figures,  mimes  for  most  part,  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
once  more  a  giant  original  man  ;  one  of  those  men  who  reach 
down  to  the  perennial  deeps,  who  take  rank  with  the  heroic 
among  men  :  and  he  was  born  in  a  poor  Ayrshire  hut.  The 
largest  soul  of  all  the  British  lands  came  among  us  in  the 
shape  of  a  hard-handed  Scottish  peasant. 

His  father,  a  poor  toiling  man,  tried  various  things  ;  did 
not  succeed  in  any  ;  was  involved  in  continual  difficulties. 
The  steward,  factor  as  the  Scotch  call  him,  used  to  send 
letters  and  threateniugs,  Burns  says,  "which  threw  us  all 
into  tears."  The  brave,  hard-toiling,  hard-suffering  father, 
his  brave  heroine  of  a  wife  ;  and  those  children  of  whom 
Robert  was  one  !  In  this  earth,  so  wide  otherwise,  no  shelter 
for  them.  The  letters  "  threw  us  all  into  tears  : "  figure  it. 
The  brave  father,  I  say  always  : — a  silent  hero  and  poet ; 
without  whom  the  son  had  never  been  a  speaking  one  ! 
Burns's  schoolmaster  came  afterwards  to  London,  learnt  what 
good  society  was ;  but  declares  that  in  no  meeting  of  men 
did  he  ever  enjoy  better  discourse  than  at  the  hearth  of  this 
peasant.  And  his  poor  "  seven  acres  of  nursery-ground," — 
not  that,  nor  the  miserable  patch  of  clay-farm,  nor  anything 
he  tried  to  get  a  living  by,  would  prosper  with  him  ;  he  had 
a  sore  unequal  battle  all  his  days.  But  he  stood  to  it 
valiantly  ;  a  wise,  faithful,  unconquerable  man  ; — swallowing- 
down  how  many  sore  sufferings  daily  into  silence  ;  fighting 
like  an  unseen  hero, — nobody  publishing  newspaper  para- 


180  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

graphs  about  his  nobleness  ;  voting  pieces  of  plate  to  him ! 
However,  he  was  not  lost ;  nothing  is  lost.  Robert  is  there  ; 
the  outcome  of  him, — and  indeed  of  many  generations  of 
such  as  him. 

This  Burns  appeared  under  every  disadvantage :  unin- 
structed,  poor,  born  only  to  hard  manual  toil ;  and  writing, 
when  it  came  to  that,  in  a  rustic  special  dialect,  known  only 
to  a  small  province  of  the  country  he  lived  in.  Had  he  writ- 
ten, even  what  he  did  write,  in  the  general  language  of  Eng- 
land, I  doubt  not  he  had  already  become  universally  recog- 
nized as  being,  or  capable  to  be,  one  of  our  greatest  men. 
That  he  should  have  tempted  so  many  to  penetrate  through 
the  rough  husk  of  that  dialect  of  his,  is  proof  that  there  lay 
something  far  from  common  within  it.  He  has  gained  a  cer- 
tain recognition,  and  is  continuing  to  do  so  over  all  quarters 
of  our  wide  Saxon  world :  wheresoever  a  Saxon  dialect  is 
spoken,  it  begins  to  be  understood,  by  personal  inspection  of 
this  and  the  other,  that  one  of  the  most  considerable  Saxon 
men  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  an  Ayrshire  peasant  named 
Robert  Burns.  Yes,  I  will  say,  here  too  was  a  piece  of  the 
right  Saxon  stuff:  strong  as  the  Harz-rock,  rooted  in  the 
depths  of  the  world  ; — rock,  yet  with  wells  of  living  softness 
in  it !  A  wild  impetuous  whirlwind  of  passion  and  faculty 
slumbered  quiet  there  ;  such  heavenly  melody  dwelling  in  the 
heart  of  it  A  noble  rough  genuineness  ;  homely,  rustic,  hon- 
est ;  true  simplicity  of  strength :  with  its  lightning-fire,  with 
its  soft  dewy  pity ; — like  the  old  Norse  Thor,  the  peasant- 
god  !— 

Burns's  brother,  Gilbert,  a  man  of  much  sense  and  worth, 
has  told  me  that  Robert,  in  his  young  days,  in  spite  of  their 
hardship,  was  usually  the  gayest  of  speech  ;  a  fellow  of  infinite 
frolic,  laughter,  sense  and  heart ;  far  pleasanter  to  hear  there, 
stript  cutting  peats  in  the  bog,  or  suchlike,  than  he  ever  after- 
wards knew  him.  I  can  well  believe  it.  This  basis  of  mirth 
("fond  gaillard"  as  old  Marquis  Mirabeau  calls  it),  a  primal 
element  of  sunshine  and  joyfulness,  coupled  with  his  other 
deep  and  earnest  qualities,  is  one  of  the  most  attractive  char- 
acteristics of  Burns.  A  large  fund  of  hope  dwells  in  him ; 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS,      1  SI 

spite  of  his  tragical  history,  lie  is  not  a  mourning  man.  He 
shakes  his  sorrows  gallantly  aside  ;  bounds  forth  victorious 
over  them.  It  is  as  the  lion  shaking  "  dew-drops  from  his 
mane  ; "  as  the  swift-bounding  horse,  that  laughs  at  the  shak- 
ing of  the  spear.  But  indeed,  hope,  mirth,  of  the  sort  like 
Burns's,  are  they  not  the  outcome  properly  of  warm  generous 
affection, — such  as  is  the  beginning  of  all  to  every  man  ? 

You  would  think  it  strange  if  I  called  Burns  the  most  gifted 
British  soul  we  had  in  all  that  century  of  his  :  and  yet  I  be- 
lieve the  day  is  coming  when  there  will  be  little  danger  in 
saying  so.  His  writings,  all  that  he  did  under  such  obstruc- 
tions, are  only  a  poor  fragment  of  him.  Professor  Stewart 
remarked  very  justly,  what  indeed  is  true  of  all  poets  good 
for  much,  that  his  poetry  was  not  any  particular  faculty  ;  but 
the  general  result  of  a  naturally  vigorous  original  mind  ex- 
pressing itself  in  that  way.  Burn's  gifts,  expressed  in  conver- 
sation, are  the  theme  of  all  that  ever  heard  him.  All  kinds 
of  gifts  :  from -the  gracefulest  utterances  of  courtesy,  to  the 
highest  fire  of  passionate  speech  ;  loud  floods  of  mirth,  soft 
waitings  of  affection,  laconic  emphasis,  clear  piercing  insight ; 
all  was  in  him.  Witty  duchesses  celebrate  him  as  a  man 
whose  speech  "  led  them  off  their  feet."  This  is  beautiful : 
but  still  more  beautiful  that  which  Mr.  Lockhart  has  recorded, 
which  I  have  more  than  once  alluded  to,  how  the  waiters  and 
ostlers  at  inns  would  get  out  of  bed,  and  come  crowding  to 
hear  this  man  speak !  Waiters  and  ostlers : — they  too  were 
men,  and  here  was  a  man !  I  have  heard  much  about  his 
speech ;  but  one  of  the  best  things  I  ever  heard  of  it  was,  last 
year,  from  a  venerable  gentleman  long  familiar  with  him. 
That  it  was  speech  distinguished  by  always  having  something 
in  it.  "  He  spoke  rather  tittle  than  much,"  this  old  man  told 
me  ;  "  sat  rather  silent  in  those  early  days,  as  in  the  company 
of  persons  above  him  ;  and  always  when  he  did  speak,  it  was 
to  throw  new  light  on  the  matter."  I  know  not  why  any  one 
should  ever  speak  otherwise  ! — But  if  we  look  at  his  general 
force  of  soul,  his  healthy  robustness  everyway,  the  rugged 
downrightness,  penetration,  generous  valor  and  manfulness  that 
was  in  him, — where  shall  we  readily  find  a  better-gifted  man  ? 


182  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

Among  the  great  men  of  the  eighteenth  century,  I  some- 
times feel  as  if  Burns  might  be  found  to  resemble  Mirabeau 
more  than  any  other.  They  differ  widely  in  vesture  ;  yet  look 
at  them  intrinsically.  There  is  the  same  burly  thick-necked 
strength  of  body  as  of  soul ; — built,  in  both  cases,  on  what  the 
old  Marquis  calls  a  fond  gaillard.  By  nature,  by  course  of 
breeding,  indeed  by  nation,  Mirabeau  has  much  more  of  blus- 
ter ;  a  noisy,  forward,  unresting  man.  But  the  characteristic 
of  Mirabeau  too  is  veracity  and  sense,  power  of  true  insight, 
superiority  of  vision.  The  thing  that  he  says  is^worth  remem- 
bering. It  is  a  flash  of  insight  into  some  object  or  other  :  so 
do  both  these  men  speak.  The  same  raging  passions  ;  capa- 
ble too  in  both  of  manifesting  themselves  as  the  tenderest 
noble  affections.  Wit,  wild  laughter,  energy,  directness,  sin- 
cerity :  these  were  in  both.  The  types  of  the  two  men  are 
not  dissimilar.  Burns  too  could  have  governed,  debated  in 
national  assemblies  ;  politicized,  as  few  could.  Alas,  the  cour- 
age which  had  to  exhibit  itself  in  capture  of  smuggling 
schooners  in  the  Solway  Frith  ;  in  keeping  silence  over  so 
much,  where  no  good  speech,  but  only  inarticulate  rage  was 
possible  :  this  might  have  bellowed  forth  Ushers  de  Breze  and 
the  like  ;  and  made  itself  visible  to  all  men,  in  managing  of 
kingdoms,  in  ruling  of  great  ever-memorable  epochs !  But 
they  said  to  him  reprovingly,  his  official  superiors  said,  and 
wrote :  "  You  are  to  work,  not  think."  Of  your  thinking- 
faculty,  the  greatest  in  this  land,  we  have  no  need ;  you  are 
to  gauge  beer  there  ;  for  that  only  are  you  wanted.  Very 
notable  ;  and  worth  mentioning,  though  we  know  what  is  to 
be  said  and  answered !  As  if  thought,  power  of  thinking,  were 
not,  at  all  times,  in  all  places  and  situations  of  the  world,  pre- 
cisely the  thing  that  was  wanted.  The  fatal  man,  is  he  not 
always  the  wnthinking  man,  the  man  wlro  cannot  think  and 
see ;  but  only  grope,  and  hallucinate,  and  missee  the  nature 
of  the  thing  he  works  with  ?  He  missees  it,  mistakes  it  as  we 
say ;  takes  it  for  one  thing,  and  it  is  another  thing, — and 
leaves  him  standing  like  a  futility  there !  He  is  the  fatal 
man  ;  unutterably  fatal,  put  in  the  high  places  of  men. — 
"  Why  complain  of  this  ? "  say  some  :  "  Strength  is  mourn- 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  1S3 

fully  denied  its  arena  ;  that  was  true  from  of  old."  Doubt- 
less ;  and  the  worse  for  the  arena,  answered  I !  Complaining 
profits  little  ;  stating  of  the  truth  may  profit.  That  a  Europe, 
with  its  French  revolution  just  breaking  out,  finds  no  need  of 
a  Burns  except  for  gauging  beer, — is  a  thing  I,  for  one,  can- 
not rejoice  at ! — 

Once  more  we  have  to  say  here,  that  the  chief  quality  of 
Burns  is  the  sincerity  of  him.  So  in  his  poetry,  so  in  his  life. 
The  song  he  sings  is  not  of  fantasticalities  ;  it  is  of  a  thing 
felt,  really  there  ;  the  prime  merit  of  this,  as  of  all  in  him, 
and  of  his  life  generally,  is  truth.  The  life  of  Burns  is  what 
we  may  call  a  great  tragic  sincerity.  A  sort  of  savage  sin- 
cerity,— not  cruel,  far  from  that ;  but  wild,  wrestling  naked 
with  the  truth  of  things.  In  that  sense,  there  is  something 
of  the  savage  in  all  great  men. 

Hero-worship, — Odin,  Burns?  Well ;  these  men  of  letters 
too  were  not  without  a  kind  of  hero-worship  :  but  what  a 
strange  condition  has  that  got  into  now  !  The  waiters  and 
ostlers  of  Scotch  inns,  prying  about  the  door,  eager  to  catch 
any  word  that  fell  from  Burns,  were  doing  unconscious  rev- 
erence to  the  heroic.  Johnson  had  his  Boswell  for  worshiper. 
Eousseau  had  worshipers  enough  ;  princes  calling  on  him  in 
his  mean  garret ;  the  great,  the  beautiful  doing  reverence  to 
the  poor  moonstruck  man.  For  himself  a  most  portentous 
contradiction  ;  the  two  ends  of  his  life  not  to  be  brought  into 
harmony.  He  sits  at  the  tables  of  grandees  ;  and  has  to  copy 
music  for  his  own  living.  He  cannot  even  get  his  music 
copied  :  "By  dint  of  dining  out,"  says  he,  "I  run  the  risk  of 
dying  by  starvation  at  home."  For  his  worshipers  too  a  most 
questionable  thing  !  If  doing  hero-worship  well  or  badly  be 
the  test  of  vital  wellbeing  or  illbeing  to  a  generation,  can  we 
say  that  these  generations,  are  very  first-rate  ? — And  yet  our 
heroic  men  of  letters  do  teach,  govern,  are  kings,  priests,  or 
what  you  like  to  call  them  ;  intrinsically  there  is  no  prevent- 
ing it  by  any  means  whatever.  The  world  has  to  obey  him 
who  thinks  and  sees  in  the  world.  The  world  can  alter  the 
manner  of  that ;  can  either  have  it  as  blessed  continuous 
summer  sunshine,  or  as  unblessed  black  thunder  and  tor- 


184  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

nado, — with  unspeakable  difference  of  profit  for  the  world  ! 
The  manner  of  it  is  very  alterable  ;  the  matter  and  fact  of  it 
is  not  alterable  by  any  power  under  the  sky.  Light ;  or, 
failing  that,  lightning :  the  world  can  take  its  choice.  Not 
whether  we  call  an  Odin  god,  prophet,  priest,  or  what  we  call 
him  ;  but  whether  we  believe  the  word  he  tells  us  :  there  it 
all  lies.  If  it  be  a  true  word,  we  shall  have  to  believe  it ;  be- 
lieving it,  we  shall  have  to  do  it.  What  name  or  welcome  we 
give  him  or  it,  is  a  point  that  concerns  ourselves  mainly.  It, 
the  new  truth,  new  deeper  revealing  of  the  secret  of  this  uni- 
verse, is  verily  of  the  nature  of  a  message  from  on  high  ;  and 
must  and  will  have  itself  obeyed. — 

My  last  remark  is  on  that  notablest  phasis  of  Burns's  his- 
tory,— his  visit  to  Edinburgh.  Often  it  seems  to  me  as  if  his 
demeanor  there  were  the  highest  proof  he  gave  of  what  a 
fund  of  worth  and  genuine  manhood  was  in  him.  If  we  think 
of  it,  few  heavier  burdens  could  be  laid  on  the  strength  of  a 
man.  So  sudden  ;  all  common  lionism,  which  ruins  innu- 
merable men,  was  as  nothing  to  this.  It  is  as  if  Napoleon 
had  been  made  a  king  of,  not  gradually,  but  at  once  from  the 
artillery  lieutenancy  in  the  regiment  La  Fere.  Burns,  still 
only  in  his  twenty-seventh  year,  is  no  longer  even  a  plough- 
man ;  he  is  flying  to  the  West  Indies  to  escape  disgrace  and 
a  jail.  This  month  he  is  a  ruined  peasant,  his  wages  seven 
pounds  a  year,  and  these  gone  from  him  :  next  month  he  is 
in  the  blaze  of  rank  and  beauty,  handing  down  jewelled  duch- 
esses to  dinner ;  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes  !  Adversity  is  some- 
times hard  upon  a  man  ;  but  for  one  man  who  can  stand 
prosperity,  there  are  a  hundred  that  will  stand  adversitjT.  I 
admire  much  the  way  in  which  Burns  met  all  this.  Perhaps 
no  man  one  could  point  out,  was  ever  so  sorely  tried,  and  so 
little  forgot  himself.  Tranquil,  unastonished  ;  not  abashed, 
not  inflated,  neither  awkwardness  nor  affectation  :  he  feels  that 
he  there  is  the  man  Robert  Burns  ;  that  the  "  rank  is  but  the 
guinea-stamp  ; "  that  the  celebrity  is  but  the  candle-light, 
wrhich  will  show  ivhat  man,  not  in  the  least  make  him  a  better 
or  other  man  !  Alas,  it  may  readily,  unless  he  look  to  it, 
make  him  a  worse  man  ;  a  wretched  inflated  wind-bag, — in- 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  185 

Hated  till  he  burst,  and  become  a  dead  lion  ;  for  whom,  as 
some  one  has  said,  "  there  is  no  resurrection  of  the  body  ; " 
worse  than  a  living  dog ! — Burns  is  admirable  here. 

And  yet,  alas,  as  I  have  observed  elsewhere,  these  lion- 
hunters  were  the  ruin  and  death  of  Burns.  It  was  they  that 
rendered  it  impossible  for  him  to  live  !  They  gathered  round 
him  in  his  farm  ;  hindered  his  industry  ;  no  place  was  remote 
enough  from  them.  He  could  not  get  his  lionism  forgotten, 
honestly  as  he  was  disposed  to  do.  He  falls  into  discontents, 
into  miseries,  faults  ;  the  world  getting  ever  more  desolate 
for  him  ;  health,  character,  peace  of  mind,  all  gone  ; — solitary 
enough  now.  It  is  tragical  to  think  of  !  These  men  came 
but  to  see  him  ;  it  was  out  of  no  sympathy  with  him,  nor  no 
hatred  to  him.  They  came  to  get  a  little  amusement :  they 
got  their  amusement ; — and  the  hero's  life  went  for  it ! 

Eichter  says,  in  the  island  of  Sumatra  there  is  a  kind  of 
"  light-chafers,"  large  fire-flies,  which  people  stick  upon  spits, 
and  illuminate  the  ways  with  at  night.  Persons  of  condition 
can  thus  travel  with  a  pleasant  radiance  which  they  much  ad- 
mire. Great  honor  to  the  fire-flies  !  But —  !  — 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.       CROMWELL,  NAPOLEON  I    MODERN  REVOLUTIONISM. 

[Friday,  22d  May,  1840.] 

We  come  now  to  the  last  form  of  heroism  ;  that  which  we 
call  kingship.  The  commander  over  men  ;  he  to  whose  will 
our  wills  are  to  be  subordinated,  and  loyally  surrender  them- 
selves, and  find  their  welfare  in  doing  so,  may  be  reckoned  the 
most  important  of  great  men.  He  is  practically  the  summary 
for  us  of  all  the  various  figures  of  heroism  ;  priest,  teacher, 
whatsoever  of  earthly  or  of  spiritual  dignity  we  can  fancy  to 
reside  in  a  man,  embodies  itself  here,  to  command  over  us,  to 
furnish  us  with  constant  practical  teaching,  to  tell  us  for  the 
day  and  hour  what  we  are  to  do.  He  is  called  Eex,  Regulator, 


186  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

Roi :  our  own  name  is  still  better  ;  King,   Konning,    which 
means  C'a«ning,  able-man. 

Numerous  considerations,  pointing  towards  deep,  question- 
able, and  indeed  unfathomable  regions,  present  themselves 
here  ;  on  the  most  of  which  we  must  resolutely  for  the  present 
forbear  to  speak  at  all.  As  Burke  said  that  perhaps  fair  trial 
by  jury  was  the  soul  of  government,  and  that  all  legislation 
administration,  parliamentary  debating,  and  the  rest  of  it,  went 
on,  "in  order  to  bring  twelve  impartial  men  into  a  jury-box," 
— so,  by  much  stronger  reason,  may  I  say  here,  that  the  find- 
ing of  yourableman  and  getting  him  invested  with  the  symbols 
of  ability,  with  dignity,  worship  (worth-ship),  royalty,  kinghood, 
or  whatever  we  call  it,  so  that  he  may  actually  have  room  to 
guide  according  to  his  faculty  of  doing  it,— is  the  business, 
well  or  ill  accomplished,  of  all  social  procedure  whatsoever  in 
this  world  !  Hustings-speeches,  parliamentary  motions,  re- 
form bills,  French  revolutions,  all  mean  at  heart  this  ;  or  else 
nothing.  Find  in  any  country  the  ablest  man  that  exists 
there  ;  raise  him  to  the  supreme  place,  and  loyally  reverence 
him  :  you  have  a  perfect  government  for  that  country  ;  no 
ballet-box,  parliamentary  eloquence,  voting,  constitution-build- 
ing, or  other  machinery  whatsoever  can  improve^it  a  whit.  It 
is  in  the  perfect  state  ;  an  ideal  country.  The  ablest  man  ; 
he  means  also  the  truest-hearted,  justest,  the  noblest  man  : 
what  he  tells  us  to  do  must  be  precisely  the  wisest,  fittest,  that 
we  could  anywhere  or  anyhow  learn  ;  the  thing  which  it  will 
in  all  ways  behove  us,  with  right  loyal  thankfulness,  and  noth- 
ing doubting,  to  do  !  Our  doing  and  life  were  then,  so  far  as 
government  could  regulate  it,  well  regulated  ;  that  were  the 
ideal  of  constitutions. 

Alas,  we  know  very  well  that  ideals  can  never  be  completely 
embodied  in  practice.  Ideals  must  ever  lie  a  very  great  way  off ; 
and  we  will  right  thankfully  content  ourselves  with  any  not 
intolerable  approximation  thereto  !  Let  no  man,  as  Schiller 
says,  too  querulously  "  measure  by  a  scale  of  perfection  the 
meagre  product  of  reality  "  in  this  poor  world  of  ours.  We 
will  esteem  him  no  wise  man  ;  wo  will  esteem  him  a  sickly, 
discontented,  foolish  man.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 


TUE  HERO  AS  KING.  IS 7 

never  to  be  forgotten  that  ideals  do  exist ;  that  if  they  be  not 
approximated  to  at  all,  the  whole  matter  goes  to  wreck  !  In- 
fallibly. No  bricklayer  builds  a  wall  perfectly  perpendicular, 
mathematically  this  is  not  possible ;  a  certain  degree  of  per- 
pendicularity suffices  him  ;  and  he,  like  a  good  bricklayer, 
who  must  have  done  with  his  job,  leaves  it  so.  And  yet  if  he 
sway  too  much  from  the  perpendicular  ;  above  all,  if  he  throw 
plummet  and  level  quite  away  from  him,  and  pile  brick  on 
brick  heedless,  just  as  it  comes  to  hand —  !  Such  bricklayer, 
I  think,  is  in  a  bad  way.  He  has  forgotten  himself  :  but  the 
law  of  gravitation  does  not  forget  to  act  on  him  ;  he  and  his 
wall  rush-down  into  confused  welter  of  ruin ! — 

This  is  the  history  of  all  rebellions,  French  revolutions,  so- 
cial explosions  in  ancient  or  modern  times.  You  have  put 
the  too  unable  man  at  the  head  of  affairs  !  The  too  ignoble, 
uuvaliant,  fatuous  man.  You  have  forgotten  that  there  is  any 
rule,  or  natural  necessity  whatever,  of  putting  the  able  man 
there.  Brick  must  lie  on  brick  as  it  may  and  can.  Unable 
simulacrum  of  ability,  quack,  in  a  word,  must  adjust  himself 
with  quack,  in  all  manner  of  administration  of  human  things  ; 
— which  accordingly  lie  unadministered,  fermenting  into  un- 
measured masses  of  failure,  of  indigent  misery  :  in  the  out- 
ward, and  in  the  inward  or  spiritual,  miserable  millions 
stretch-out  the  hand  for  their  due  supply,  and  it  is  not  there. 
The  "  law  of  gravitation  "  acts  ;  nature's  lawrs  do  none  of  them 
forget  to  act.  The  miserable  millions  burst-forth  into  sans- 
culottism,  or  some  other  sort  of  madness  :  bricks  and  brick- 
layer lie  as  a  fatal  chaos  ! — 

Much  sorry  stuff,  written  some  hundred  years  ago  or  more, 
about  the  "  divine  right  of  kings,"  moulders  unread  now  in 
the  public  libraries  of  this  country.  Far  be  it  from  us  to  dis- 
turb the  calm  process  by  which  it  is  disappearing  harmlessly 
from  the  earth,  in  those  repositories  !  At  the  time,  not  to  let 
the  immense  rubbish  go  without  leaving  us,  as  it  ought,  some 
soul  of  it  behind — I  will  say  that  it  did  mean  something ; 
something  true,  which  it  is  important  for  us  and  all  men  to 
keep  in  mind.  To  assert  that  in  whatever  man  you  choose  to 
lay  hold  of  (by  this  or  the  other  plan  of  clutching  at  him)  ; 


133  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

and  clapt  a  round  piece  of  metal  011  the  bead  of,  and  called 
king, — there  straightway  came  to  reside  a  divine  virtue,  so 
that  he  became  a  kind  of  god,  and  a  divinity  inspired  him  with 
faculty  and  right  to  rule  over  you  to  all  lengths  :  this, — what 
can  we  do  with  this  but  leave  it  to  rot  silently  in  the  public 
libraries  ?  But  I  will  say  withal,  and  that  is  wrhat  these 
divine  right  men  meant,  that  in  kings,  and  in  all  human  au- 
thorities, and  relations  that  men  god-created  can  form  among 
each  other,  there  is  verily  either  a  divine  right  or  else  a  dia- 
bolical wrong  ;  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  !  For  it  is  false 
altogether,  what  the  last  skeptical  century  taught  us,  that  this 
world  is  a  steamengine.  There  is  a  God  in  this  world ;  and  a 
God-sanction,  or  else  the  violation  of  such,  does  look-out 
from  all  ruling  and  obedience,  from  all  moral  acts  of  men. 
There  is  no  act  more  moral  between  men  than  that  of  rule  and 
obedience.  Woe  to  him  that  claims  obedience,  when  it  is  not 
due  ;  woe  to  him  that  refuses  it  when  it  is  !  God's  law  is  in 
that,  I  say,  however  the  parchment-laws  may  run  ;  there  is  a 
divine  right  or  else  a  diabolical  wrong  at  the  heart  of  every 
claim  that  one  man  makes  upon  another. 

It  can  do  none  of  us  harm  to  reflect  on  this  ;  in  all  the  re- 
lations of  life  it  will  concern  us ;  in  loyalty  and  royalty,  the 
highest  of  these.  I  esteem  the  modern  error,  that  all  goes  by 
self-interest  and  the  checking  and  balancing  of  greedy  knav- 
eries, and  that,  in  short,  there  is  nothing  divine  whatever  in 
the  association  of  men,  a  still  more  despicable  error,  natural 
as  it  is  to  an  unbelieving  century,  than  that  of  a  "  divine 
right  "  in  people  called  kings.  I  say,  find  me  the  true  k  tinning, 
king  or  able-man,  and  he  has  a  divine  right  over  me.  That 
we  knew  in  some  tolerable  measure  how  to  find  him,  and  that 
all  men  were  ready  to  acknowledge  his  divine  right  when 
found  :  this  is  precisely  the  healing  which  a  sick  world  is 
everywhere,  in  these  ages,  seeking  after !  The  true  king,  as 
guide  to  the  practical,  has  ever  something  of  the  pontiff  in 
him, — guide  of  the  spiritual,  from  which  all  practice  has  its 
rise.  This  too  is  a  true  saying,  that  the  Ling  is  head  of  the 
church.  But  we  will  leave  the  polemic  stuff  of  a  dead  century 
to  lie  quiet  on  its  bookshelves. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  1S9 

Certainly  it  is  a  fearful  business,  that  of  having  your  able- 
man  to  seek,  and  not  knowing  in  what  manner  to  proceed 
about  it !  That  is  the  world's  sad  predicament  in  these  times 
of  ours.  They  are  times  of  revolution,  and  have  long  been. 
The  brick-layer  with  his  bricks,  no  longer  heedful  of  plummet 
or  the  law  of  gravitation,  have  toppled,  tumbled,  and  it  all 
welters  as  we  see !  But  the  beginning  of  it  was  not  the 
French  revolution  ;  that  is  rather  the  end,  we  can  hope.  It 
were  truer"  to  say,  the  beginning  was  three  centuries  farther 
back  :  in  the  reformation  of  Luther.  That  the  thing  which 
still  called  itself  Christian  Church  had  become  a  falsehood, 
and  brazenly  went  about  pretending  to  pardon  men's  sins  for 
metallic  coined  money,  and  to  do  much  else  which  in  the 
everlasting  truth  of  nature  it  did  not  now  do  :  here  lay  the 
vital  malady.  The  inward  being  wrong,  all  outward  "went 
ever  more  and  more  wrong.  Belief  died  away  ;  all  was  doubt, 
disbelief.  The  builder  cast  aicajj  his  plummet ;  said  to  him- 
self, "  What  is  gravitation  ?  Brick  lies  on  brick  there  ! " 
Alas,  does  it  not  still  sound  strange  to  many  of  us,  the  asser- 
tion that  there  is  a  God's-truth  in  the  business  of  god-created 
men  ;  that  all  is  not  a  kind  of  grimace,  and  "  expediency," 
diplomacy,  one  knows  not  what ! — 

From  that  first  necessary  assertion  of  Luther's,  "  You,  self- 
styled  Papa,  you  are  no  father  in  God  at  all ;  you  are — a  chi- 
mera, whom  I  know  not  how  to  name  in  polite  language  !  " — 
from  that  onwards  to  the  shout  which  rose  around  Camille 
Desmouhus  in  the  Palais-Koyal,  "  Aux  armes  !  "  when  the  peo- 
ple had  burst-up  all  manner  of  chimeras, — I  find  a  natural 
historical  sequence.  That  shout  too,  so  frightful,  half-infer- 
nal, was  a  great  matter.  Once  more  the  voice  of  awakened 
nations  ; — starting  confusedly,  as  out  of  nightmare,  as  out  of 
death-sleep,  into  some  dim  feeling  that  life  was  real ;  that 
God's-world  was  not  an  expediency  and  diplomacy  !  Infer- 
nal ;— yes,  since  they  would  not  have  it  otherwise.  Infernal, 
since  not  celestial  or  terrestrial !  Hollowness,  insincerity 
has  to  cease  ;  sincerity  of  some  sort  has  to  begin.  Cost 
what  it  may,  reigns  of  terror,  horrors  of  French  revolution 
or  what  else,  we  have  to  return  to  truth.  Here  is  a  truth,  as 


190  UEROES  AND  HERO- WORSHIP. 

I  said  :  a  truth  clad  iu  hell-fire,  since  they  would  not  but  have 
it  so  ! — 

A  common  theory  among  considerable  parties  of  men  in 
England  and  elsewhere  used  to  be,  that  the  French  nation 
had,  in  those"  days,  as  it  were  gone  mad  ;  that  the  French  rev- 
olution was  a  general  act  of  insanity,  a  temporary  conversion 
of  France  and  large  sections  of  the  world  into  a  kind  of  Bed- 
lam. The  event  had  risen  and  raged  ;  but  was  a  madness  and 
nonenity, — gone  now  happily  into  the  region  of  dreams  and 
the  picturesque  !  —  To  such  comfortable  philosophers,  the 
three  days  of  July,  1880,  must  have  been  a  surprising  phenom- 
enon. Here  is  the  French  nation  risen  again,  in  musketry  and 
death-struggle,  out  shooting  and  being  shot,  to  make  that 
same  mad  French  revolution  good  !  The  sons  and  grandsons 
of  those  men.  it  would  seem,  persist  in  the  enterprise  :  they 
do  not  disown  it ;  they  will  have  it  made  good  ;  will  have 
themselves  shot,  if  it  be  not  made  good !  To  philosophers 
who  had  made-up  their  life-system  on  that  "  madness"  quietus, 
no  phenomenon  could  be  more  alarming.  Poor  Niebuhr,  they 
say,  the  Prussian  professor  and  historian,  fell  broken-hearted 
in  consequence  ;  sickened,  if  we  can  believe  it,  and  died  of  the 
three  days !  It  was  surely  not  a  very  heroic  death  ;  little  bet- 
ter than  Racine's,  dying  because  Louis  Fourteenth  looked 
sternly  on  him  once.  The  world  had  stood  some  considerable 
shocks,  in  its  time  ;  might  have  been  expected  to  survive  the 
three  days  too,  and  be  found  turning  on  its  axis  after  even 
them  !  The  three  days  told  all  mortals  that  the  old  French 
revolution,  mad  as  it  might  look,  was  not  a  transitory  ebulli- 
tion of  Bedlam,  but  a  genuine  product  of  this  earth  where  we 
all  live  ;  that  it  was  verily  a  fact,  and  that  the  world  in  general 
would  do  well  everywhere  to  regard  it  as  such. 

Truly,  without  the  French  revolution,  one  would  not  know 
what  to  make  of  an  age  like  this  at  all.  We  will  hail  the 
French  revolution,  as  shipwrecked  mariners  might  the  sternest 
rock,  in  a  world  otherwise  all  of  baseless  sea  and  waves.  A 
true  apocalypse,  though  a  terrible  one,  to  this  false  withered 
artificial  time  ;  testifying  once  more  that  nature  is  prdernok- 
ural  ;  if  not  divine,  then  diabolic  ;  that  semblance  is  not 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  191 

reality  ;  that  it  has  to  become  reality,  or  the  world  will  take- 
iire  under  it, — burn  it  into  what  it  is,  namely  nothing  !  Plausi- 
bility has  ended  ;  empty  routine  has  ended  ;  much  has  ended. 
This,  as  with  a  trump  of  doom,  has  been  proclaimed  to  all 
men.  They  are  the  wisest  who  will  learn  it  soonest.  Long 
confused  generations  before  it  be  learned  ;  peace  impos- 
sible till  it  be  !  The  earnest  man,  surrounded,  as  ever, 
with  a  world  of  inconsistencies,  can  await  patiently,  patiently 
strive  to  do  his  work,  in  the  midst  of  that.  Sentence  of  death 
is  written  down  in  heaven  against  all  that  ;  sentence  of  death 
is  now  proclaimed  on  the  earth  against  it :  this  he  with  his 
eyes  may  see.  And  surely,  I  should  say,  considering  the  other 
side  of  the  matter,  what  enormous  difficulties  lie  there,  and 
how  fast,  fearfully  fast,  in  all  countries,  the  inexorable  demand 
for  solution  of  them  is  pressing  on, — he  may  easily  find  other 
work  to  do  than  laboring  in  the  sanscullotic  province  at  this 
time  of  day  ! 

To  me,  in  these  circumstances,  that  of  "  hero-worship  "  be- 
comes a  fact  inexpressibly  precious ;  the  most  solacing  fact 
one  sees  in  the  world  at  present.  There  is  an  everlasting 
hope  in  it  for  the  management  of  the  world.  Had  all  tradi- 
tions, arrangements,  creeds,  societies  that  men  ever  instituted, 
sunk  away,  this  would  remain.  The  certainty  of  heroes  being 
sent  us  ;  our  faculty,  our  necessity,  to  reverence  heroes  when 
sent :  it  shines  like  a  polestar  through  smoke-clouds,  dust 
clouds,  and  all  manner  of  down-rushing  and  conflagration. 

Hero-worship  would  have  sounded  very  strange  to  those 
workers  and  fighters  in  the  French  revolution.  Not  reverence 
for  great  men  ;  not  any  hope  or  belief,  or  even  wish  that 
great  men  could  again  appear  in  the  world  !  Nature,  turned 
into  a  "  machine,"  was  as  if  effete  now  ;  could  not  any  longer 
produce  great  men  : — I  can  tell  her,  she  may  give  up  the  trade 
altogether,  then  ;  we  cannot  do  without  great  men  ! — But 
.neither  have  I  any  quarrel  with  that  of  "  liberty  and  equal- 
ity ; "'  with  the  faith  that,  wise  great  men  being  impossible, 
a  level  immensity  of  foolish  small  men  would  suffice.  It 
was  a  natural  faith,  then  and  there.  "  Liberty  and  equality  ; 
no  authority  needed  any  longer.  Hero- worship,  reverence 


192  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

for  such  authorities,  has  proved  false,  is  itself  a  falsehood  ; 
no  more  of  it !  We  have  had  such  forgeries,  we  -will  now 
trust  nothing.  So  many  base  plated  coins  passing  in  the 
market,  the  belief  has  now  become  common  that  no  gold  any 
longer  exists, — and  even  that  we  can  do  very  well  without 
gold !  "  I  find  this,  among  other  things,  in  that  universal  cry 
of  liberty  and  equality  ;  and  find  it  very  natural,  as  matters 
then  stood. 

And  yet  surely  it  is  but  the  transition  from  false  to  true. 
Considered  as  the  whole  truth,  it  is  false  altogether ; — the 
product  of  entire  skeptical  blindness,  as  yet  only  struggling 
to  see.  Hero-worship  exists  forever,  and  everywhere  :  not 
loyalty  alone ;  it  extends  from  divine  adoration  down  to  the 
lowest  practical  regions  of  life.  "Bending  before  men,"  if  it 
is  not  to  be  a  mere  empty  grimace,  better  dispensed  with 
than  practised,  is  hero-worship, — a  recognition  that  there  does 
dwell  in  that  presence  of  our  brother  something  divine  ;  that 
every  created  man,  as  Novalis  said,  is  a  "  revelation  in  the 
flesh."  They  were  poets  too,  that  devised  all  those  grace- 
ful courtesies  which  make  life  noble !  Courtesy  is  not  a  false- 
hood or  grimace  ;  it  need  not  be  such.  And  loyalty,  religious 
worship  itself,  are  still  possible  ;  nay  still  inevitable. 

May  we  not  say,  moreover,  while  so  many  of  our  late  heroes 
have  worked  rather  as  revolutionary  men,  that  nevertheless 
every  great  man,  every  genuine  man,  is  by  the  nature  of  him 
a  son  of  order,  not  of  disorder  ?  It  is  a  tragical  position  for 
a  true  man  to  work  in  revolutions.  He  seems  an  anarchist ; 
and  indeed  a  painful  element  of  anarchy  does  encumber  him 
at  every  step, — him  to  whose  whole  soul  anarchy  is  hostile, 
hateful.  His  mission  is  order ;  every  man's  is.  He  is  here 
to  make  what  was  disorderly,  chaotic,  into  a  thing  ruled, 
regular.  He  is  the  missionary  of  order.  Is  not  all  work  of 
man  in  this  world  a  making  of  order  ?  The  carpenter  finds 
rough  trees ;  shapes  them,  constrains  them  into  square  fitness, 
into  purpose  and  use.  We  are  all  born  enemies  of  disorder  : 
it  is  tragical  for  us  all  to  be  concemed  in  image-breaking  and 
down-pulling ;  for  the  great  man,  more  a  man  than  we,  it  is 
doubly  tragical. 


THE  IIERO  AS  KING.  193 

Thus  too  all  human  things,  maddest  French  sansculottisms. 
do  and  must  work  towards  order.  I  say,  there  is  not  a  man 
in  them,  raging  in  the  thickest  of  the  madness,  but  is  impelled 
withal,  at  all  moments,  towards  order.  His  very  life  means 
that ;  disorder  is  dissolution,  death.  No  chaos  but  it  seeks  a 
center  to  revolve  round.  While  man  is  man,  some  Cromwell 
or  Napoleon  is  the  necessary  finish  of  a  sansculottism. — 
Curious :  in  those  days  when  hero-worship  was  the  most  in- 
credible thing  to  every  one,  how  it  does  come-out  neverthe- 
less, and  assert  itself  practically,  in  a  way  which  all  have  to 
credit.  Divine  right,  take  it  on  the  great  scale,  is  found  to 
mean  divine  might  withal !  While  old  false  formulas  are  getting 
trampled  everywhere  into  destruction,  new  genuine  substances 
unexpectedly  unfold  themselves  indestructible.  In  rebellious 
ages,  when  kingship  itself  seems  dead  and  abolished,  Cromwell, 
Napoleon  step-forth  again  as  kings.  The  history  of  these 
men  is  what  we  have  now  to  look  at,  as  our  last  phasis  of 
heroism.  The  old  ages  are  brought  back  to  us  ;  the  manner 
in  which  kings  were  made,  and  kingship  itself  first  took  rise, 
is  again  exhibited  in  the  history  of  these  two. 

We  have  had  many  civil-wars  in  England  ;  wars  of  red  and 
white  roses,  wars  of  Simon  de  Montfort ;  wars  enough  which 
are  not  very  memorable.  But  that  war  of  the  Puritans  has  a 
significance  which  belongs  to  no  one  of  the  others.  Trusting 
to  your  candor,  which  will  suggest  on  the  other  side  what  I 
have  not  room  to  say,  I  will  call  it  a  section  once  more  of 
that  great  universal  war  which  alone  makes-up  the  true  his- 
tory of  the  world, — the  war  of  belief  against  unbelief  !  The 
struggle  of  men  intent  on  the  real  essence  of  things,  against 
'men  intent  on  the  semblances  and  forms  of  things.  The  Puri- 
tans, to  many,  seem  mere  savage  iconoclasts,  fierce  destroyers 
of  forms  ;  but  it  were  more  just  to  call  them  haters  of  untrue 
forms.  I  hope  we  know  how  to  respect  Laud  and  his  king  as 
well  as  them.  Poor  Laud  seems  to  me  to  have  been  weak 
and  ill-starred,  not  dishonest ;  an  unfortunate  pedant  rather 
than  anything  worse.  His  "  dreams "  and  superstitions,  at 
which  they  laugh  so,  have  an  affectionate,  lovable  kind  of 
13 


HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

character.  He  is  like  a  college-tutor,  -whose  whole  world  is 
forms,  college-rules ;  whose  notion  is  that  these  are  the  life 
and  safety  of  the  world.  He  is  placed  suddenly,  with  that 
unalterable  luckless  notion  of  his,  at  the  head  not  of  a  college 
but  of  a  nation,  to  regulate  the  most  complex  deep-reaching 
interests  of  men.  He  thinks  they  ought  to  go  by  the  old  de- 
cent regulations  ;  nay  that  their  salvation  will  lie  in  extend- 
ing and  improving  these.  Like  a  weak  man,  he  drives  with 
spasmodic  vehemence  towards  his  purpose  ;  cramps  himself  to 
it,  heeding  no  voice  of  prudence,  no  cry  of  pity  ;  he  will  have 
his  college  rules  obeyed  by  his  collegians  ;  that  first ;  and  till 
that,  nothing.  He  is  an  ill-starred  pedant,  as  I  said.  He 
would  have  it  the  world  was  a  college  of  that  kind,  and  the 
world  was  not  that.  Alas,  was  not  his  doom  stern  enough  ? 
Whatever  wrongs  he  did,  were  they  not  all  frightfully  avenged 
on  him? 

It  is  meritorious  to  insist  on  forms  ;  religion  and  all  else 
naturally  clothes  itself  in  forms.  Everywhere  the  formed 
world  is  the  only  habitable  one.  The  naked  formlessness  of 
Puritanism  is  not  the  thing  I  praise  in  the  Puritans  ;  it  is  the 
thing  I  pity, — praising  only  the  spirit  which  had  rendered 
that  inevitable  !  All  substances  clothe  themselves  in  forms  : 
but  there  are  suitable  true  forms,  and  then  there  are  untrue 
unsuitable.  As  the  briefest  definition,  one  might  say,  forms 
which  grow  round  a  substance,  if  we  rightly  understand  that, 
will  correspond  to  the  real  nature  and  purport  of  it,  will  be 
true,  good  ;  forms  which  are  consciously  put  round  a  sub- 
stance, bad.  I  invite  you  to  reflect  on  this.  It  distinguishes 
true  from  false  in  ceremonial  form,  earnest  solemnity  from 
empty  pageant,  in  all  human  things. 

There  must  be  a  veracity,  a  natural  spontaneity  in  forms. 
In  the  commonest  meeting  of  men,  a  person  making,  what 
we  call,  " set  speeches,"  is  not  he  an  offence?  In  the  mere 
drawing-room,  whatsoever  courtesies  you  see  to  be  grimaces, 
prompted  by  no  spontaneous  reality  within,  are  a  thing  you 
wish  to  get  away  from.  But  suppose  now  it  was  some  matter 
of  vital  concernment,  some  transcendent  matter  (as  divine 
worship  is),  about  which  your  whole  soul,  struck  dumb  with 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  195 

its  excess  of  feeling,  knew  not  how  to  form  itself  into  utter- 
ance at  all,  and  preferred  formless  silence  to  any  utterance 
there  possible, — what  should  we  say  of  a  man  coining  forward 
to  represent  or  utter  it  for  you  in  the  way  of  upholsterer- 
mummery?  Such  a  man, — let  him  depart  swiftly,  if  he  lovo 
himself !  You  have  lost  your  only  son  ;  are  mute,  struck 
down,  without  even  tears  :  an  importunate  man  importunately 
offers  to  celebrate  funeral  games  for  him  in  the  manner  of  the 
Greeks !  Such  mummery  is  not  only  not  to  be  accepted, — it 
is  hateful,  unendurable.  It  is  what  the  old  prophets  called 
"idolatry,"  worshiping  of  hollow  shows;  what  all  earnest 
men  do  and  will  reject.  We  can  partly  understand  what 
those  poor  Puritans  meant.  Laud  dedicating  that  St.  Cath- 
erine Creed's  Church,  in  the  manner  we  have  it  described ; 
with  his  multiplied  ceremonial  bowings,  gesticulations,  excla- 
mations :  surely  it  is  rather  the  rigorous  formal  pedant,  in- 
tent on  his  "College-rules,"  than  the  earnest  prophet,  intent 
on  the  essence  of  the  matter ! 

Puritanism  found  such  forms  insupportable  ;  trampled  on 
such  forms  ; — we  have  to  excuse  it  for  saying,  No  form  at  all 
rather  than  such !  It  stood  preaching  in  its  bare  pulpit,  with 
nothing  but  the  Bible  in  its  hand.  Nay,  a  man  preaching 
from  his  earnest  soul  into  the  earnest  souls  of  men :  is  not 
this  virtually  the  essence  of  all  churches  whatsoever  ?  Xhe 
nakedest,  savagest  reality,  I  say,  is  preferable  to  any  sem- 
blance, however  dignified.  Besides,  it  will  clothe  itself  with 
due  semblance  by  and  by,  if  it  be  real.  No  fear  of  that ;  act- 
ually no  fear  at  all  Given  the  living  man,  there  will  be  found 
clothes  for  him  ;  he  will  find  himself  clothes.  But  the  suit-of- 
clothes  pretending  that  it  is  both  clothes  and  man — ! — We 
cannot  "fight  the  French  "by  three-hundred-thousand  red 
uniforms  ;  there  must  be  men  in  the  inside  of  them  !  Sem- 
blance, I  assert,  must  actually  not  divorce  itself  from  reality. 
If  semblance  do, — why  then  there  must  be  men  found  to 
rebel  against  semblance,  for  it  has  become  a  lie  !  These  two 
antagonisms  at  war  here,  in  the  case  of  Laud  and  the  Puri- 
tans, are  as  old  nearly  as  the  world.  They  went  to  fierce  bat- 
tle over  England  in  that  age ;  and  fought-out  their  confused 


196  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

controversy  to  a  certain  length,  with  many  results  for  all 
of  us. 

In  the  age  which  directly  followed  that  of  the  Puritans, 
their  cause  or  themselves  were  little  likely  to  have  justice 
done  them.  Charles  Second  and  his  Rochesters  were  not  the 
kind  of  men  you  would  set  to  judge  what  the  worth  or  mean- 
ing of  such  men  might  have  been.  That  there  could  be  any 
faith  or  truth  in  the  life  of  a  man,  was  what  these  poor  Roch- 
esters,  and  the  age  they  ushered-in,  had  forgotten.  Puritan- 
ism was  hung  on  gibbets, — like  the  bones  of  the  leading 
Puritans.  Its  work  nevertheless  went  on  accomplishing  itself. 
All  true  work  of  a  man,  hang  the  author  of  it  on  what  gibbet 
you  like,  must  and  will  accomplish  itself.  We  have  our  habeas- 
corpus,  our  free  representation  of  the  people  ;  acknowledg- 
ment, wide  as  the  world,  that  all  men  are,  or  else  must,  shall, 
and  will  become,  what  we  call/ree  men  ; — men  with  their  life 
grounded  on  reality  and  justice,  not  on  tradition,  which  has 
become  unjust  and  a  chimera !  This  in  part,  and  much  be- 
sides this,  was  the  work  of  the  Puritans. 

And  indeed,  as  these  things  became  gradually  manifest,  the 
character  of  the  Puritans  began  to  clear  itself.  Their  memo- 
ries were,  one  after  another,  taken  down  from  the  gibbet ;  nay 
a  certain  portion  of  them  a're  now,  in  these  days,  as  good  as 
canonized.  Eliot,  Hampden,  Pyrn,  nay  Ludlow,  Hutchinson, 
Vane  himself,  are  admitted  to  be  a  kind  of  heroes ;  political 
conscript  fathers,  to  whom  in  no  small  degree  we  owe  what 
makes  us  a  free  England  ;  it  would  not  be  safe  for  anybody 
to  designate  these  men  as  wicked  now.  Few  Puritans  of  note 
but  find  their  apologists  somewhere,  and  have  a  certain  rever- 
ence paid  them  by  earnest  men.  One  Puritan,  I  think,  and 
almost  he  alone,  our  poor  Cromwell,  seems  to  hang  yet  on 
the  gibbet,  and  find  no  hearty  apologist  anywhere.  Him 
neither  saint  nor  sinner  will  acquit  of  great  wickedness.  A 
man  of  ability,  infinite  talent,  courage,  and  so  forth  ;  but  he 
betrayed  the  cause.  Selfish  ambition,  dishonesty,  duplicity  ; 
a  fierce,  coarse,  hypocritical  Tartufe ;  turning  all  that  noble 
struggle  for  constitutional  liberty  into  a  sorry  farce  played 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  197 

for  his  own  benefit :  this  and  worse  is  the  character  they  give 
of  Cromwell  And  then  there  come  contrasts  with  Washing- 
ton and  others  ;  above  all,  with  those  noble  Pyms  and  Hamp- 
dens,  whose  noble  work  he  stole  for  himself,  and  ruined  into 
a  futility  and  deformity. 

This  view  of  Cromwell  seems  to  me  the  not  unnatural  prod- 
uct of  a  century  like  the  eighteenth.  As  we  said  of  the  valet, 
so  of  the  skeptic  :  he  does  not  know  a  hero  when  he  sees  him  ! 
The  valet  expected  purple  mantles,  gilt  scepters,  body-guards 
and  flourishes  of  trumpets  :  the  skeptic  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury looks  for  regulated  respectable  formulas,  "principles," 
or  what  else  he  may  call  them  ;  a  style  of  speech  and  conduct 
which  has  got  to  seem  "respectable,"  which  can  plead  for  it- 
self in  a  handsome  articulate  manner,  and  gain  the  suffrages 
of  an  enlightened  skeptical  eighteenth  century !  It  is,  at  bot- 
tom, the  same  thing  that  both  the  valet  and  he  expect :  the 
garnitures  of  some  acknowledged  royalty,  which  then  they  will 
acknowledge  !  The  king  coming  to  them  in  the  rugged  un- 
fornmlistic  state  shall  be  no  king. 

For  my  own  share,  far  be  it  from  me  to  say  or  insinuate  a 
woi'd  of  disparagement  against  such  characters  as  Hampden, 
Eliot,  Pym  ;  whom  I  believe  to  have  been  right  worthy  and 
useful  men.  I  have  read  diligently  what  books  and  docu- 
ments about  them  I  could  come  at ; — with  the  honestest  wish 
to  admire,  to  love  and  worship  them  like  heroes ;  but  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  if  the  real  truth  must  be  told,  with  very  indiffer- 
ent success  !  At  bottom,  I  found  that  it  would  not  do.  They 
are  very  noble  men,  these ;  step  along  in  their  stately  way, 
with  their  measured  euphemisms,  philosophies,  parliamentary 
eloquences,  ship-moneys,  monarchies  of  man ;  a  most  consti- 
tutional, unblamable,  dignified  set  of  men.  But  the  heart  re- 
mains cold  before  them  :  the  fancy  alone  endeavors  to  get-up 
some  worship  of  them.  What  man's  heart  does  in  reality 
break-forth  into  any  fire  of  brotherly-love  for  these  men? 
They  are  become  dreadfully  dull  men !  One  breaks-down 
often  enough  in  the  constitutional  eloquence  of  the  admirable 
Pym,  with  his  "seventhly  and  lastly."  You  find  that  it  may 
be  the  admirablest  thing  in  the  world,  but  that  it  is  heavy, — 


198  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

heavy  as  lead,  barren  as  brick-clay  ;  that,  in  a  word,  for  you 
there  is  little  or  nothing  now  surviving  there  !  One  leaves  all 
these  nobilities  standing  in  their  niches  of  honor  :  the  rugged- 
outcast  Cromwell,  he  is  the  man  of  them  all  in  whom  one  still 
finds  human  stuff.  The  great  savage  Baresark :  he  could 
write  no  euphemistic  "  Monarchy  of  Man  ; "  did  not  speak, 
did  not  work  with  glib  regularity  ;  had  no  straight  story  to 
tell  for  himself  anywhere.  But  he  stood  bare,  not  cased  in 
euphemistic  coat-of-mail ;  he  grappled  like  a  giant,  face  to 
face,  heart  to  heart,  with  the  naked  truth  of  things !  That, 
after  all,  is  the  sort  of  man  for  one.  I  plead  guilty  to  valuing 
such  a  man  beyond  all  other  sorts  of  men.  Smooth-shaven 
respectabilities  not  a  few  one  finds,  that  are  not  good  for 
much.  Small  thanks  to  a  man  for  keeping  his  hands  clean, 
who  would  not  touch  the  work  but  with  gloves  on  ! 

Neither,  on  the  whole,  does  this  constitutional  tolerance  of 
the  eighteenth  century  for  the  other  happier  Puritans  seem  to 
be  a  very  great  matter.  One  might  say,  it  is  but  a  piece  of 
formulism  and  skepticism,  like  the  rest.  They  tell  us,  it  was 
a  sorrowful  thing  to  consider  that  the  foundation  of  our  Eng- 
lish liberties  should  have  been  laid  by  "  superstition."  These 
Puritans  came  forward  with  Calvinistic  incredible  creeds, 
Anti-Laudisins,  Westminster  confessions  ;  demanding,  chiefly 
of  all,  that  they  should  have  liberty  to  worshiii  in  their  own 
way.  Liberty  to  tax  themselves :  that  was  the  thing  they 
should  have  demanded  !  It  was  superstition,  fanaticism,  dis- 
graceful ignorance  of  constitutional  philosophy  to  insist  on  the 
other  thing  ! — Liberty  to  tax  oneself  ?  Not  to  pay-out  money 
from  your  pocket  except  on  reason  shown  ?  No  century,  I 
think,  but  a  rather  barren  one  would  have  fixed  on  that  as  the 
first  right  of  man  !  I  should  say,  on  the  contrary,  a  just  man 
will  generally  have  better  cause  than  money  in  what  shape 
soever,  before  deciding  to  revolt  against  his  government. 
Ours  is  a  most  confused  world  ;  in  which  a  good  man  will  be 
thankful  to  see  any  kind  of  government  maintain  itself  in  a 
not  insupportable  manner :  and  here  in  England,  to  this  hour, 
if  he  is  not  ready  to  pay  a  great  many  taxes  which  he  can  see 
very  small  reason  in,  it  will  not  go  well  with  him,  I  think ! 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  199 

He  must  try  some  other  climate  than  this.  Taxgatherer? 
Money  ?  He  will  say  :  "  Take  my  money,  since  you  can,  and 
it  is  so  desirable  to  you  ;  take  it, — and  take  yourself  away 
with  it ;  and  leave  me  alone  to  my  work  here.  /  am  still 
here  ;  can  still  work,  after  all  the  money  you  have  taken  from 
me  ! "  But  if  they  come  to  him,  and  say,  "  Acknowledge  a 
lie  ;  pretend  to  say  you  are  worshiping  God,  when  you  are  not 
doing  it :  believe  not  the  thing  that  you  find  true,  but  the 
thing  that  I  find,  or  pretend  to  find  true  !  "  He  will  answer  : 
"Xo  ;  by  God's  help,  no!  You  may  take  my  purse  ;  but  I 
cannot  have  my  moral  self  annihilated.  The  purse  is  any 
highwayman's  who  might  meet  me  with  a  loaded  pistol :  but 
the  self  is  mine  and  God  my  maker's  ;  it  is  not  yours ;  and  I 
will  resist  you  to  the  death,  and  revolt  against  you,  and,  on 
the  whole,  front  all  manner  of  extremities,  accusations  and 
confusions,  in  defence  of  that !  " — 

Really,  it  seems  to  me  the  one  reason  which  could  justify 
revolting,  this  of  the  Puritans.  It  has  been  the  soul  of  all  just 
revolts  among  men.  Not  hunger  alone  produced  even  the 
French  revolution  ;  no,  but  the  feeling  of  the  insupportable 
all-pervading  falsehood  which  had  now  embodied  itself  in  hun- 
ger, in  universal  material  scarcity  and  nonentity,  and  thereby 
become  indisputably  false  in  the  eyes  of  all !  We  will  leave 
the  eighteenth  century  with  its  "  liberty  to  tax  itself."  We- 
will  not  astonish  ourselves  that  the  meaning  of  such  men  as 
the  Puritans  remained  dim  to  it.  To  men  who  believe  in  no 
reality  at  all,  how  shall  a  real  human  soul,  the  intensest  of  all 
realities,  as  it  were  the  voice  of  this  world's  Maker  still  speak- 
ing to  us, — be  intelligible  ?  What  it  cannot  reduce  into  con- 
stitutional doctrines  relative  to  "taxing, "or  other  the  like  ma- 
terial interest,  gross,  palpable  to  the  sense,  such  a  century 
will  needs  reject  as  an  amorphous  heap  of  rubbish.  Hamp- 
dens,  Pyrns  and  Ship-money  will  be  the  theme  of  much  con- 
stitutional eloquence,  striving  to  be  fervid  ; — which  will  glitter, 
if  not  as  fire  does,  then  as  ice  does  :  and  the  irreducible 
Cromwell  will  remain  a  chaotic  mass  of  "madness,"  "hypoc- 
risy," and  much  else. 


200  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

From  of  old,  I  will  confess,  this  theory  of  Cromwell's  falsity 
has  been  incredible  to  me.  Nay  I  cannot  believe  the  like,  of 
any  great  man  whatever.  Multitudes  of  great  men  figure  in 
history  as  false  selfish  men  ;  but  if  we  will  consider  it,  they 
are  but  figures  for  us,  unintelligible  shadows  ;  we  do  not  see 
into  them  as  men  that  could  have  existed  at  all.  A  superficial 
unbelieving  generation  only,  with  no  eye  but  for  the  surfaces 
and  semblances  of  things,  could  form  such  notions  of  great 
men.  Can  a  great  soul  be  possible  without  a  conscience  in  it, 
the  essence  of  all  real  souls,  great  or  small  ? — No,  we  cannot 
figure  Cromwell  as  a  falsity  and  fatuity  ;  the  longer  I  study 
him  and  his  career,  I  believe  this  the  less.  Why  should  we  ? 
There  is  no  evidence  of  it.  Is  it  not  strange  that,  after  all  the 
mountains  of  calumny  this  man  has  been  subject  to,  after  be- 
ing represented  as  the  very  prince  of  liars,  who  never,  or 
hardly  ever,  spoke  truth,  but  always  some  cunning  counterfeit 
of  truth,  there  should  not  yet  have  been  one  falsehood  brought 
clearly  home  to  him?  A  prince  of  liars,  and  no  lie  spoken  by 
him.  Not  one  that  I  could  yet  get  sight  of.  It  is  like  Pococke 
asking  Grotius,  where  is  your  proof  of  Mohammed's  pigeon  ? 
No  proof ! — Let  us  leave  all  these  calumnious  chimeras,  as 
chimeras  ought  to  be  left.  They  are  not  portraits  of  the  man  ; 
they  are  distracted  phantasms  of  him,  the  joint  product  of 
hatred  and  darkness. 

Looking  at  the  man's  life  with  our  own  eyes,  it  seems  to  me, 
a  very  different  hypothesis  suggests  itself.  What  little  we 
know  of  his  earlier  obscure  years,  distorted  as  it  has  come 
down  to  us,  does  it  not  all  betoken  an  earnest,  affectionate, 
sincere  kind  of  man  ?  His  nervous  melancholic  temperament 
indicates  rather  a  seriousness  too  deep  for  him.  Of  those 
stories  of  "specters  ;  "  of  the  white  specter  in  broad  daylight, 
predicting  that  he  should  be  king  of  England,  we  are  not 
bound  to  believe  much  ; — probably  no  more  than  of  the  other 
black  specter,  or  devil,  in  person,  to  whom  the  officer  saw 
him  sell  himself  before  Worcester  fight !  But  the  mournful, 
over-sensitive,  hypochondriac  humor  of  Oliver,  in  his  young 
years,  is  otherwise  indisputably  known.  The  Huntingdon 
physician  told  Sir  Philip  Warwick  himself,  he  had  often  been 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  201 

sent  for  at  midnight ;  Mr.  Cromwell  was  full  of  hypochondria, 
thought  himself  near  dying,  and  "  had  fancies  about  the  town- 
cross."  These  things  are  significant.  Such  an  excitable  deep- 
feeling  nature,  in  that  rugged  stubborn  strength  of  his,  is 
not  the  symptom  of  falsehood ;  it  is  the  symptom  and  promise 
of  quite  other  than  falsehood  ! 

The  young  Oliver  is  sent  to  study  law  ;  falls,  or  is  said  to 
have  fallen,  for  a  little  period,  into  some  of  the  dissipations  of 
youth  ;  but  if  so,  speedily  repents,  abandons  all  this ;  not 
much  above  twenty,  he  is  married,  settled  as  an  altogether 
grave  and  quiet  man.  "  He  pays-back  what  money  he  had 
won  at  gambling,"  says  the  story ; — he  does  not  think  any 
gain  of  that  kind  could  be  really  his.  It  is  very  interesting, 
very  natural,  this  "conversion,"  as  they  well  name  it;  this 
awakening  of  a  great  true  soul  from  the  worldly  slough,  to 
see  into  the  awful  truth  of  things  ; — to  see  that  time  and  its 
shows  all  rested  on  eternity,  and  this  poor  earth  of  ours  was 
the  threshold  either  of  heaven  or  of  hell !  Oliver's  life  at  St. 
Ives  and  Ely,  as  a  sober  industrious  farmer,  is  it  not  altogether 
as  that  of  a  true  and  devout  man  ?  He  has  renounced  the 
world  and  its  ways  ;  its  prizes  are  not  the  thing  that  can  en- 
rich him.  He  tills  the  earth  ;  he  reads  his  Bible  ;  daily  as- 
sembles his  servants  around  him  to  worship  God.  He  com- 
forts persecuted  ministers,  is  fond  of  preachers ;  nay  can 
himself  preach, — exhorts  his  neighbors  to  be  wise,  to  redeem 
the  time.  In  all  this  what  "hypocrisy,"  "ambition,"  "cant," 
or  other  falsity  ?  The  man's  hopes,  I  do  believe,  were  fixed  on 
the  other  higher  world  ;  his  aim  to  get  well  thither,  by  walk- 
ing well  through  his  humble  course  in  this  world.  He  courts 
no  notice  :  what  could  notice  here  do  for  him  ?  "Ever  in  his 
great  taskmaster's  eye." 

It  is  striking,  too,  how  he  comes-out  once  into  public  view  ; 
he,  since  no  other  is  willing  to  come  :  in  resistance  to  a  public 
grievance.  I  mean,  in  that  matter  of  the  Bedford  Fens.  No 
one  else  will  go  to  law  with  authority  ;  therefore  he  will.  That 
matter  once  settled,  he  returns  back  into  obscurity,  to  his 
Bible  and  his  plough.  "  Gain  influence  ?  "  His  influence  is 
the  most  legitimate  ;  derived  from  personal  knowledge  of  him, 


202  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

as  a  just,  religious,  reasonable  and  determined  man.  In  this 
way  he  has  lived  till  past  forty  ;  old  age  is  now  in  view  of  him, 
and  the  earnest  portal  of  death  and  eternity ;  it  was  at  this 
point  that  he  suddenly  became  "  ambitious  !  "  I  do  not  inter- 
pret his  parliamentary  mission  in  that  way  ! 

His  successes  in  parliament,  his  successes  through  the  war, 
are  honest  successes  of  a  brave  man  ;  who  has  more  resolution 
in  the  heart  of  him,  more  light  in  the  head  of  him  than  other 
men.  His  prayers  to  God  ;  his  spoken  thanks  to  the  God  of 
victory,  who  had  preserved  him  safe,  and  carried  him  forward 
so  far,  through  the  furious  clash  of  a  world  all  set  in  conflict, 
through  desperate-looking  envelopments  at  Dunbar  ;  through 
the  death-hail  of  so  many  battles  ;  mercy  after  mercy  ;  to  the 
"  crowning  mercy  "  of  Worcester  fight :  all  this  is  good  and 
genuine  for  a  deep-hearted  Calvinistic  Cromweh1.  Only  to 
vain  unbelieving  cavaliers,  worshiping  not  God  but  their  own 
"  love-locks,"  frivolities  and  formalities,  living  quite  apart  from 
contemplations  of  God,  living  without  God  in  the  world,  need 
it  seem  hypocritical. 

Nor  will  his  participation  in  the  king's  death  involve  him 
in  condemnation  with  us.  It  is  a  stern  business  killing  of  a 
king  !  But  if  you  once  go  to  war  with  him,  it  lies  there  ;  this 
and  all  else  lies  there.  Once  at  war,  you  have  made  wager  of 
battle  with  him  :  it  is  he  to  die,  or  else  you.  Beconciliation 
is  problematic ;  may  be  possible,  or,  far  more  likely,  is  im- 
possible. It  is  now  pretty  generally  admitted  that  the  parlia- 
ment, having  vanquished  Charles  First,  had  no  way  of  making 
any  tenable  arrangement  with  him.  The  large  Presbyterian 
party,  apprehensive  now  of  the  Independents,  were  most 
anxious  to  do  so  ;  anxious  indeed  as  for  their  own  existence  ; 
but  it  could  not  be.  The  unhappy  Charles,  in  those  final 
Hampton- court  negotiations,  shows  himself  as  a  man  fatally 
incapable  of  being  dealt  with.  A  man  who,  once  for  all,  could 
not  and  would  not  understand : — whose  thought  did  not  in  any 
measure  represent  to  him  the  real  fact  of  the  matter  ;  nay 
worse,  whose  word  did  not  at  all  represent  his  thought.  We 
may  say  this  of  him.  without  cruelty,  with  deep  pity  rather : 
but  it  is  time  and  undeniable.  Forsaken  there  of  all  but  the 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  203 

name  of  kingship,  be  still,  finding  himself  treated  with  outward 
respect  as  a  king,  fancied  that  he  might  play-off  party  against 
party,  and  smuggle  himself  into  his  old  power  by  deceiving 
both.  Alas,  they  both  discovered  that  he  was  deceiving  them. 
A  man  whose  word  will  not  inform  you  at  all  what  he  means 
or  will  do,  is  not  a  man  you  can  bargain  with.  You  must  get 
out  of  that  man's  way,  or  put  him  out  of  yours !  The  Presbyte- 
rians, in  their  despair,  were  still  for  believing  Charles,  though 
found  false,  unbelievable  again  and  again.  Not  so  Cromwell  : 
"  for  all  our  fighting,"  says  he,  "  we  are  to  have  a  little  bit  of 
paper?"  No! — 

In  fact,  everywhere  we  have  to  note  the  decisive  practical 
eye  of  this  man ;  how  he  drives  towards  the  practical  and 
practicable  ;  has  a  genuine  insight  into  what  is  fact.  Such 
an  intellect,  I  maintain,  does  not  belong  to  a  false  man ;  the 
false  man  sees  false  shows,  plausibilities,  expediences :  the 
true  man  is  needed  to  discern  even  practical  truth.  Crom- 
well's advice  about  the  parliament's  army,  early  in  the  contest, 
how  they  were  to  dismiss  their  city-tapsters,  flimsy  riotous 
persons,  and  choose  substantial  yeomen,  whose  heart  was  in 
the  work,  to  be  soldiers  for  them :  this  is  advice  by  a  man 
who  saw.  Fact  answers,  if  you  see  into  fact !  Cromwell's 
Ironsides  were  the  embodiment  of  this  insight  of  his ;  men 
fearing  God  ;  and  without  any  other  fear.  No  more  conclu- 
sively genuine  set  of  fighters  ever  trod  the  soil  of  England,  or 
of  any  other  land. 

Neither  will  we  blame  greatly  that  word  of  Cromwell's  to 
them  ;  which  was  so  blamed  :  "  If  the  king  should  meet  me 
in  battle,  I  would  kill  the  king."  Why  not?  These  words 
were  spoken  to  men  who  stood  as  before  a  higher  than  longs. 
They  had  set  more  than  their  own  lives  on  the  cast.  The 
parliament  may  call  it,  in  official  language,  a  fighting  "for 
the  king ; "  but  we,  for  our  share,  cannot  understand  that. 
To  us  it  is  no  dilettante  work,  no  sleek  officiality  ;  it  is  a 
sheer  rough  death  and  earnest.  They  have  brought  it  to  the 
calling-forth  of  icar  ;  horrid  internecine  fight,  man  grappling 
with  man  in  fire-eyed  rage, — the  infernal  element  in  man 
called  forth,  to  try  it  by  that !  Do  that  therefore  ;  since  that  is 


204  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

the  thing  to  be  done.  The  successes  of  Cromwell  seem  to  me 
a  very  natural  thing !  Since  he  was  not  shot  in  battle,  they 
were  an  inevitable  thing.  That  such  a  man,  with  the  eye  to 
see,  with  the  heart  to  dare,  should  advance,  from  post  to  post-, 
from  victory  to  victory,  till  the  Huntingdon  farmer  became,  by 
whatever  name  you  might  call  him,  the  acknowledged  strong- 
est man  in  England,  virtually  the  king  of  England,  requires 
no  magic  to  explain  it ! — 

Truly  it  is  a  sad  thing  for  a  people,  as  for  a  man,  to  fall 
into  skepticism,  into  dilettantism,  insincerity  ;  not  to  know  a 
sincerity  when  they  see  it.  For  this  world,  and  for  all  worlds, 
what  curse  is  so  fatal?  The  heart  lying  dead,  the  eye  cannot 
see.  What  intellect  remains  is  merely  the  vulpine  intellect. 
That  a  true  king  be  sent  them  is  of  small  use  ;  they  do  not 
know  him  when  sent.  They  say  scornfully,  Is  this  your  king? 
The  hero  wastes  his  heroic  faculty  in  bootless  contradiction 
from  the  unworthy  ;  and  can  accomplish  little.  For  himself 
he  does  accomplish  a  heroic  life,  which  is  much,  which  is  all ; 
but  for  the  world  he  accomplishes  comparatively  nothing. 
The  wild  rude  sincerity,  direct  from  nature,  is  not  glib  in  an- 
swering from  the  witness-box :  in  your  small-debt  pie-powder 
court,  he  is  scouted  as  a  counterfeit.  The  vulpine  intellect 
"  detects"  him.  For  being  a  man  worth  any  thousand  men, 
the  response  your  Knox,  your  Cromwell  gets,  is  an  argument 
for  two  centuries  whether  he  was  a  man  at  all.  God's  great- 
est gift  to  this  earth  is  sneeringly  flung  away.  The  miracu- 
lous talisman  is  a  paltry  plated  coin,  not  fit  to  pass  in  the  shops 
as  a  common  guinea. 

Lamentable  this !  I  say,  this  must  be  remedied.  Till  this 
be  remedied  in  some  measure,  there  is  nothing  remedied. 
"Detect  quacks?"  Yes  do,  for  heaven's  sake;  but  know 
withal  the  men  that  are  to  be  trusted !  Till  we  know  that, 
what  is  all  our  knowledge;  how  shah1  we  even  so  much  as 
"  detect  ?  "  For  the  vulpine  sharpness,  which  considers  itself 
to  be  knowledge,  and  "detects"  in  that  fashion,  is  far  mis- 
taken. Dupes  indeed  are  many,  but,  of  all  dupes,  there  is 
none  so  fatally  situated  as  he  who  lives  in  undue  terror  of 
being  duped.  The  world  does  exist ;  the  world  has  truth  in 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  205 

it,  or  it  would  not  exist !  First  recognize  what  is  true,  we 
shall  then  discern  what  is  false  ;  and  properly  never  till  then. 

"  Know  the  men  that  are  to  be  trusted  : "  alas,  this  is  yet, 
in  these  days,  very  far  from  us.  The  sincere  alone  can  recog- 
nize sincerity.  Not  a  hero  only  is  needed,  but  a  world  fit  for 
him  ;  a  world  not  of  valets ; — the  hero  comes  almost  in  vain 
to  it  otherwise !  Yes,  it  is  far  from  us,  but  it  must  come  ; 
thank  God,  it  is  visibly  coming.  Till  it  do  come,  what  have 
we  ?  Ballot-boxes,  suffrages,  French  revolutions  : — if  we  are 
as  valets,  and  do  not  know  the  hero  when  we  see  him,  what 
good  are  all  these  ?  A  heroic  Cromwell  comes  ;  and  for  a 
hundred-and-fifty  years  he  cannot  have  a  vote  from  us.  Why, 
the  insincere,  unbelieving  world  is  the  natural  properly  of  the 
quack ;  and  of  the  father  of  quacks  and  quackeries !  Misery, 
confusion,  unveracity  are  alone  possible  there.  By  ballot- 
boxes  we  alter  the  figure  of  our  quack  ;  but  the  substance  of 
him  continues.  The  valet-world  has  to  be  governed  by  the 
sham-hero,  by  the  king  merely  dressed  in  king-gear.  It  is 
his  ;  he  is  its !  In  brief,  one  of  two  things :  We  shall  either 
learn  to  know  a  hero,  a  true  governor  and  captain,  somewhat 
better,  when  we  see  him  ;  or  else  go  on  to  be  forever  gov- 
erned by  the  unheroic ; — had  we  ballot-boxes  clattering  at 
every  street-corner,  there  were  no  remedy  in  these. 

Poor  Cromwell, — great  Cromwell !  The  inarticulate  proph- 
et ;  prophet  who  could  not  speak.  Rude,  confused,  strug- 
gling to  utter  himself,  with  his  savage  depth,  with  his  wild 
sincerity  ;  and  he  looked  so  strange,  among  the  elegant 
euphemisms,  dainty  little  Falklands,  didactic  Chillingworths, 
diplomatic  Clarendons!  Consider  him.  An  outer  hull  of 
chaotic  confusion,  visions  of  the  devil,  nervous  dreams,  al- 
most semi-madness  ;  and  yet  such  a  clear  determinate  mau's- 
energy  working  in  the  heart  of  thai  A  kind  of  chaotic  man. 
The  ray  as  of  pure  starlight  and  fire,  working  in  such  an  ele- 
ment of  boundless  hypochondria,  tmformed  black  of  dark- 
ness !  And  yet  withal  this  hypochondria,  what  was  it  but  the 
very  greatness  of  the  man  ?  The  depth  and  tenderness  of  his 
wild  affections  :  the  quantity  of  sympathy  he  had  with  things, 
— the  quantity  of  insight  he  would  yet  get  into  the  heart  of 


206  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

things,  the  mastery  he  would  vet  get  over  things  ;  this  was  his 
hypochondria.  The  man's  misery,  as  man's  misery  always 
does,  came  of  his  greatness.  Samuel  Johnson  too  is  that  laud 
of  man.  Sorrow- stricken,  half-distracted  ;  the  wide  element 
of  mournful  black  enveloping  him, — wide  as  the  world.  It  is 
the  character  of  a  prophetic  man  :  a  man  with  his  whole  soul 
seeing,  and  struggling  to  see. 

On  this  ground,  too,  I  explain  to  myself  Cromwell's  reputed 
confusion  of  speech.  To  himself  the  internal  meaning  was 
sun-clear  ;  but  the  material  with  which  he  was  to  clothe  it  in 
utterance  was  not  there.  He  had  liced  silent ;  a  great  un- 
named sea  of  thought  round  him  all  his  days  ;  and  in  his  way 
of  life  little  call  to  attempt  naming  or  uttering  that.  With  his 
sharp  power  of  vision,  resolute  power  of  action,  I  doubt  not  he 
could  have  learned  to  write  books  withal,  and  speak  fluently 
enough  ; — he  did  harder  things  than  writing  of  books.  This 
kind  of  man  is  precisely  he  who  is  fit  for  doing  manfully  all 
things  you  will  set  him  on  doing.  Intellect  is  not  speaking 
and  logicizing  ;  it  is  seeing  and  ascertaining.  Virtue,  Vir-tn,<, 
manhood,  hero-hood,  is  not  fair-spoken  immaculate  regularity  ; 
it  is,  first  of  all,  what  the  Germans  well  name  it,  Tuyend  (Tau- 
gend,  doiv-ing  or  Dough-tmess),  courage  and  the  faculty  to  do. 
This  basis  of  the  matter  Cromwell  had  in  him. 

One  understands  moreover  how,  though  he  could  not  speak 
in  Parliament,  he  might  preach,  rhapsodic  preaching  ;  above 
all,  how  he  might  be  great  in  extempore  prayer.  These  are 
the  free  outpouring  utterances  of  what  is  in  the  heart :  method 
is  not  required  in  them  ;  warmth,  depth,  sincerity  are  all  that 
is  required.  Cromwell's  habit  of  prayer  is  a  notable  feature 
of  him.  All  his  great  enterprises  were  commenced  with  prayer. 
In  dark  inextricable-looking  difficulties,  his  officers  and  he  used 
to  assemble,  and  pray  alternately,  for  hours,  for  days,  till  some 
definite  resolution  rose  among  them,  some  "  door  of  hope,"  as 
they  would  name  it,  disclose  itself.  Consider  that.  In  tears, 
in  fervent  prayers,  and  cries  to  the  great  God,  to  have  pity  on 
them,  to  make  His  light  shine  before  them.  They,  armed 
soldiers  of  Christ,  as  they  felt  themselves  to  be  ;  a  little  bund 
of  Christian  brothers,  who  had  drawn  the  sword  against  a 


THE  UERO  AS  KING.  207 

great  black  devouring  world  not  Christian,  but  mammonish, 
devilish, — they  cry  to  God  in  their  straits,  in  their  extreme 
need,  not  to  forsake  the  cause  that  was  His.  The  light  which 
now  rose  upon  them, — how  could  a  human  soul,  by  any  means 
at  all,  get  better  light  ?  Was  not  the  purpose  so  formed  like 
to  be  precisely  the  best,  wisest,  the  one  to  be  followed  with- 
out hesitation  any  more  ?  To  them  it  was  as  the  shining  of 
heaven's  own  splendor  in  the  waste-howling  darkness  ;  the 
pillar  of  fire  by  night,  that  was  to  guide  them  on  their  deso- 
late perilous  way.  Was  it  not  such  ?  Can  a  man's  soul,  to 
this  hour  get  guidance  by  any  other  method  than  intrinsically 
by  that  same, — devout  prostration  of  the  earnest  struggling 
soul  before  the  Highest,  the  Giver  of  all  light ;  be  such  prayer 
a  spoken,  articulate,  or  be  it  a  voiceless,  inarticulate  one  ? 
There  is  no  other  method.  "  Hypocrisy?  "  One  begins  to  be 
weary  of  ah1  that.  They  who  call  it  so,  have  no  right  to  speak 
on  such  matters.  They  never  formed  a  purpose,  what  one  can 
call  a  purpose.  They  went  about  balancing  expediencies, 
plausibilities  ;  gathering  votes,  advices  ;  they  never  were  alone 
with  the  truth  of  a  thing  at  all. — Cromwell's  prayers  were 
likely  to  be  "  eloquent,"  and  much  more  than  that.  His  was 
the  heart  of  a  man  who  could  pray. 

But  indeed  his  actual  speeches,  I  apprehend,  were  not  nearly 
so  ineloquent,  incondite,  as  they  look.  We  find  he  was,  what 
ah1  speakers  aim  to  be,  an  impressive  speaker,  even  in  Parlia- 
ment ;  one  who,  from  the  first,  had  weight.  With  that  rude 
passionate  voice  of  his,  he  was  always  understood  to  mean 
something,  and  men  wished  to  know  what.  He  disregarded 
eloquence,  nay  despised  and  disliked  it ;  spoke  always  without 
premeditation  of  the  words  he  was  to  use.  The  reporters, 
too,  in  those  days  seem  to  have  been  singularly  candid ;  and 
to  have  given  the  printer  precisely  what  they  found  on  their 
own  note-paper. — And  withal,  what  a  strange  proof  is  it  of 
Cromwell's  being  the  premeditative  ever-calculating  hypocrite, 
acting  a  play  before  the  world,  that  to  the  last  he  took  no 
more  charge  of  his  speeches !  How  came  he  not  to  study  his 
words  a  little,  before  flinging  them  out  to  the  public  ?  If  the 
words  were  true  words,  they  could  be  left  to  shift  for  themselves. 


208  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

But  with  regard  to  Cromwell's  "  lying,"  we  will  make  one 
remark.  This,  I  suppose,  or  something  like  this,  to  have  been 
the  nature  of  it.  All  parties  found  themselves  deceived  in 
him  ;  each  party  understood  him  to  be  meaning  this,  heard 
him.  even  say  so,  and  behold  he  turns-out  to  have  been  mean- 
ing that !  He  was,  cry  they,  the  chief  of  liars.  But  now,  in- 
trinsically, is  not  all  this  the  inevitable  fortune,  not  of  a  false 
man  in  such  times,  but  simply  of  a  superior  man  ?  Such  a 
man  must  have  reticences  in  him.  If  he  walk  wearing  his 
heart  upon  his  sleeve  for  daws  to  peck  at,  his  journey  will  not 
extend  far.  There  is  no  use  for  any  man's  taking-up  his  abode 
in  a  house  built  of  glass.  A  man  always  is  to  be  himself  the 
judge  how  much  of  his  mind  he  will  show  to  other  men  ;  even 
to  those  he  would  have  work  along  with  him.  There  are  im- 
pertinent inquiries  made  ;  your  rule  is,  to  leave  the  inquirer 
w^informed  on  that  matter ;  not,  if  you  can  help  it,  ?nisin- 
formed,  but  precisely  as  dark  as  he  was  !  This,  could  one  hit 
the  right  phrase  of  response,  is  what  the  wise  and  faithful  man 
would  aim  to  answer  in  such  a  case. 

Cromwell,  no  doubt  of  it,  spoke  often  in  the  dialect  of  small 
subaltern  parties  ;  uttered  to  them  a  part  of  his  mind.  Each 
little  party  thought  him  all  its  own.  Hence  their  rage,  one 
and  all,  to  find  him  not  of  their  party,  but  of  his  own  party  ! 
Was  it  his  blame  ?  At  all  seasons  of  his  history  he  must  have 
felt  among  such  people,  how,  if  he  explained  to  them  the 
deeper  insight  he  had,  they  must  either  have  shuddered  aghast 
at  it,  or  believing  it,  their  own  little  compact  hypothesis  must 
have  gone  wholly  to  wreck.  They  could  not  have  worked  in 
his  province  any  more  ;  nay  perhaps  they  could  not  now  have 
worked  in  their  own  province.  It  is  the  inevitable  position  of 
a  great  man  among  small  men.  Small  men,  most  active,  use- 
ful, are  to  be  seen  everywhere,  whose  whole  activity  depends 
on  some  conviction  which  to  you  is  palpably  a  limited  one  ; 
imperfect,  what  we  call  an  error.  But  would  it  be  a  kindness 
always,  is  it  a  duty  always  or  often,  to  disturb  them  in  that? 
Many  a  man,  doing  loud  work  in  the  world,  stands  only  on 
some  thin  traditionally,  conventionality  ;  to  him  indubitable, 
to  you  incredible  ;  break  that  beneath  him,  he  sinks  to  endless 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  209 

depths  !     "I  might  have  my  hand  full  of  truth,"  said  Fonte- 
nelle,  "and  open  only  my  little  finger." 

And  if  this  be  the  fact,  even  in  matters  of  doctrine,  how 
much  more  in  all  departments  of  practice  !  He  that  cannot 
withal  keep  his  mind  to  himself  cannot  practice  any  consider- 
able thing  whatever.  And  we  call  it  "  dissimulation,"  all  this  ? 
"What  would  you  think  of  calling  the  general  of  an  army  a 
dissembler  because  he  did  not  tell  every  corporal  and  private 
soldier,  who  pleased  to  put  the  question,  what  his  thoughts 
were  about  everything  ? — Cromwell,  I  should  rather  say,  man- 
aged all  this  in  a  manner  we  must  admire  for  its  perfection. 
An  endless  vortex  of  such  questioning  "  corporals  "  rolled  con- 
fusedly round  him  through  his  whole  course  ;  whom  he  did 
answer.  It  nmst  have  been  as  a  great  true-seeing  man  that 
he  managed  this  too.  Not  one  proved  falsehood,  as  I  said  ; 
not  one  !  Of  what  man  that  ever  wound  himself  through 
such  a  coil  of  things  will  you  say  so  much  ? — 

But  in  fact  there  are  two  errors,  widely  prevalent,  which 
pervert  to  the  very  basis  our  judgments  formed  about  such 
men  as  Cromwell,  about  their  "  ambition,"  "  falsity,"  and 
suchlike.  The  first  is  what  I  might  call  substituting  the  goal 
of  their  career  for  the  course  and  starting  point  of  it.  The 
vulgar  historian  of  a  Cromwell  fancies  that  he  had  determined 
on  being  Protector  of  England,  at  the  time  he  was  ploughing 
the  marsh  lauds  of  Cambridgeshire.  His  career  lay  all  mapped- 
out ;  a  program  of  the  whole  drama  ;  which  he  then  step  by 
step  dramatically  unfolded,  with  all  manner  of  cunning,  decep- 
tive dramaturgy,  as  he  went  on, — the  hollow,  scheming  'YTTO- 
K/atrijs,  or  play-actor,  that  he  was  !  This  is  a  radical  perversion  ; 
all  but  universal  in  such  cases.  And  think  for  an  instant  how 
different  the  fact  is  !  How  much  does  one  of  ws  foresee  of 
his  own  life  ?  Short  way  ahead  of  us  it  is  all  dim  ;  an  nn- 
wound  skein  of  possibilities,  of  apprehensions,  attemptabilities, 
vague-looming  hopes.  This  Cromwell  had  not  his  life  lying 
all  in  that  fashion  of  program,  which  he  needed  then,  with 
that  unfathomable  cunning  of  his,  only  to  enact  dramatically, 
scene  after  scene  !  Not  so.  We  see  it  so  ;  but  to  him  it  was 
14 


210  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

in  no  measure  so.  What  absurdities  would  fall  away  of  them- 
selves, were  this  one  undeniable  fact  kept  honestly  in  view  by 
history !  Historians  indeed  will  tell  you  that  they  do  keep  it 
in  view  ; — but  look  whether  such  is  practically  the  fact !  Vul- 
gar history,  as  in  this  Cromwell's  case,  omits  it  altogether ; 
even  the  best  kinds  of  history  only  remember  it  now  and  then. 
To  remember  it  duly  with  rigorous  perfection,  as  in  the  fact 
it  stood,  requires  indeed  a  rare  faculty  ;  rare,  nay,  impossible. 
A  very  Shakespeare  for  faculty  ;  or  more  than  Shakespeare  ; 
who  could  enact  a  brother  man's  biography,  see  with  the 
brother  man's  eyes  at  all  points  of  his  course  what  things  he 
saw  ;  in  short,  know  his  course  and  him,  as  few  "  historians  " 
are  like  to  do.  Half  or  more  of  all  the  thick-plied  perversions 
which  distort  our  image  of  Cromwell,  will  disappear,  if  we 
honestly  so  much  as  try  to  represent  them  so  ;  in  sequence, 
as  they  were  ;  not  in  the  lump,  as  they  are  thrown-dowu  be- 
fore us. 

But  a  second  error,  which  I  think  the  generality  com- 
mit, refers  to  this  same  "  ambition  "  itself.  We  exaggerate 
the  ambition  of  great  men  ;  we  mistake  what  the  nature  of  it 
is.  Great  men  are  not  ambitious  in  that  sense  ;  he  is  a  small 
poor  man  that  is  ambitious  so.  Examine  the  man  who  lives 
in  misery  because  he  does  not  shine  above  other  men  ;  who 
goes  about  producing  himself,  pruriently  anxious  about  his 
gifts  and  claims  ;  struggling  to  force  everybody,  as  it  were 
begging  everybody  for  God's  sake,  to  acknowledge  him  a 
great  man,  and  set  him  over  the  heads  of  men  !  Such  a  creat- 
ure is  among  the  wretchedest  sights  seen  under  this  sun.  A 
great  man  ?  A  poor  morbid  prurient  empty  man  ;  fitter  for 
the  ward  of  a  hospital,  than  for  a  throne  among  men.  I  ad- 
vise you  to  keep-out  of  his  way.  He  cannot  walk  on  quiet 
paths  ;  unless  you  will  look  at  him,  wonder  at  him,  write  para- 
graphs about  him,  he  cannot  live.  It  is  the  emptiness  of  the 
man,  not  his  greatness.  Because  there  is  nothing  in  himself, 
he  hungers  and  thirsts  that  you  will  find  something  in  him. 
In  good  truth,  I  believe  no  great  man,  not  so  much  as  a  gen- 
uine man  who  had  health  and  real  substance  in  him  of  what- 
ever magnitude,  was  ever  much  tormented  in  this  way. 


TUB  HERO  AS  KING.  211 

Your  Cromwell,  what  good  could  it  do  him  to  be  "  noticed '' 
by  noisy  crowds  of  people  ?  God  Lis  Maker  already  noticed 
him.  He,  Cromwell,  was  already  there  ;  no  notice  would 
make  him  other  than-  he  already  was.  Till  his  hair  was  grown 
gray  ;  and  life  from  the  downhill  slope  was  all  seen  to  be  lim- 
ited, not  infinite  but  finite,  and  all  a  measurable  matter  how 
it  went, — he  had  been  content  to  plough  the  ground,  and  read 
his  Bible.  He  in  his  old  days  could  not  support  it  any  longer, 
without  selling  himself  to  falsehood,  that  he  might  ride  in  gilt 
carriages  to  Whitehall,  and  have  clerks  with  bundles  of  paper 
haunting  him,  "  Decide  this,  decide  that,"  which  in  utmost 
SOITOW  of  heart  no  man  can  perfectly  decide  !  "What  could 
gilt  carriages  do  for  this  man  ?  From  of  old,  was  there  not 
in  his  life  a  weight  of  meaning,  a  terror  and  a  splendor  as  of 
heaven  itself  ?  His  existence  there  as  man  set  him  beyond 
the  need  of  gilding.  Death,  judgment  and  eternity  :  these 
already  lay  as  the  background  of  whatsoever  he  thought  or 
did.  All  his  life  lay  begirt  as  in  a  sea  of  nameless  thoughts, 
which  no  speech  of  a  mortal  could  name.  God's  word,  as  the 
Puritan  prophets  of  that  time  had  read  it ;  this  was  great,  and 
all  else  was  little  to  him.  To  call  such  a  man  "  ambitious,"  to 
figure  him  as  the  prurient  windbag  described  above,  seems  to 
me  the  poorest  solecism.  Such  a  man  wall  say  :  "Keep  your 
gilt  carriages  and  huzzaing  mobs,  keep  your  red-tape  clerks, 
your  iufluentialities,  your  important  businesses.  Leave  me 
alone,  leave  me  alone  ;  there  is  too  much  of  life  in  me  already  !  " 
Old  Samuel  Johnson,  the  greatest  soul  in  England  in  his  day, 
was  not  ambitious.  "  Corsica  Boswell "  flaunted  at  public 
shows  with  printed  ribbons  round  his  hat ;  but  the  great  old 
Samuel  stayed  at  home.  The  world-wide  soul  wrapt  up  in  its 
thoughts,  in  its  sorrows  ; — what  could  paradings,  and  ribbons 
in  the  hat,  do  for  it  ? 

Ah,  yes,  I  will  say  again  :  The  great  silent  men  !  Looking 
round  on  the  noisy  inanity  of  the  world,  words  with  little  mean- 
ing, actions  with  little  worth,  one  loves  to  reflect  on  the  great 
empire  of  silence.  The  noble  silent  men,  scattered  here  and 
there,  each  in  his  department  ;  silently  thinking,  silently 
working ;  whom  no  morning  newspaper  makes  mention  of  ! 


212  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

They  are  the  salt  of  the  earth.  A  country  that  has  none  or 
few  of  these  is  in  a  bad  way.  Like  a  forest  which  had  no 
roots  ;  which  had  all  turned  into  leaves  and  boughs  ; — which 
must  soon  wither  and  be  no  forest.  Woe  for  us  if  we  had 
nothing  but  what  we  can  show,  or  speak.  Silence,  the  great 
empire  of  silence  :  higher  than  the  stars  ;  deeper  than  the 
kingdoms  of  death !  It  alone  is  great ;  all  else  is  small. — 
I  hope  we  English  will  long  maintain  our  grand  talent  pour 
le  silence.  Let  others  that  cannot  do  without  standing  on 
barrel-heads,  to  spout,  and  be  seen  of  all  the  market-place, 
cultivate  speech  exclusively, — become  a  most  green  forest 
without  roots  !  Solomon  says  there  is  a  time  to  speak ;  but 
also  a  time  to  keep  silence.  Of  some  great  silent  Samuel, 
not  urged  to  writing,  as  old  Samuel  Johnson  says  he  was,  by 
want  of  money,  and  nothing  other,  one  might  ask,  "Why  do 
not  you  too  get  up  and  speak  ;  promulgate  your  system,  found 
your  sect?"  "Truly,"  he  will  answer,  "I  am  continent  of 
my  thought  hitherto  ;  happily  I  have  yet  had  the  ability  to 
keep  it  in  me,  no  compulsion  strong  enough  to  speak  it.  My 
'  system  '  is  not  for  promulgation  first  of  all ;  it  is  for  serving 
myself  to  live  by.  That  is  the  great  purpose  of  it  to  me. 
And  then  the  '  honor  ?  '  Alas,  yes  ; — but  as  Cato  said  of  the 
statue  :  "  So  many  statues  in  that  forum  of  yours,  may  it  not 
be  better  if  they  ask,  where  is  Cato's  statue  ?  "- 

But  now,  by  way  of  counterpoise  to  this  of  silence,  let  me 
say  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  ambition  ;  one  wholly  blamable, 
the  other  laudable  and  inevitable.  Nature  has  provided  that 
the  great  silent  Samuel  shall  not  be  silent  too  long.  The  self- 
ish wish  to  shine  over  others,  let  it  be  accounted  altogether 
poor  and  miserable.  "  Seekest  thou  great  things,  seek  them 
not : "  this  is  most  true.  And  yet,  I  say,  there  is  an  irrepres- 
sible tendency  in  every  man  to  develop  himself  according  to 
the  magnitude  which  nature  has  made  him  of ;  to  speak-out, 
to  act-out,  what  nature  has  laid  in  him.  This  is  proper,  fit, 
inevitable  ;  nay  it  is  a  duty,  and  even  the  summary  of  duties 
for  a  man.  The  meaning  of  life  here  on  earth  might  be  de- 
fined as  consisting  in  this  :  to  unfold  your  self,  to  work  what 
thing  you  have  the  faculty  for.  It  is  a  necessity  for  the  hu- 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  213 

man  being,  the  first  law  of  our  existence.  Coleridge  beauti- 
fully remarks  that  the  infant  learns  to  speak  by  this  necessity 
it  feels. — We  will  say  therefore :  To  decide  about  ambition, 
whether  it  is  bad  or  not,  you  have  two  things  to  take  into 
view.  Not  the  coveting  of  the  place  alone,  but  the  fitness  of 
the  man  for  the  place  withal :  that  is  the  question.  Perhaps 
the  place  was  his ;  perhaps  he  had  a  natural  right,  and  even 
obligation,  to  seek  the  place  !  Mirabeau's  ambition  to  be 
Prime  Minister,  how  shall  we  blame  it,  if  he  were  "  the  only 
man  in  France  that  could  have  done  any  good  there  ?  "  Hope- 
fuler  perhaps  had  he  not  so  clearly  felt  how  much  good  he 
could  do  !  But  a  poor  Necker,  who  could  do  no  good,  and 
had  even  felt  that  he  could  do  none,  yet  sitting  broken-hearted 
because  they  had  flung  him  out,  and  he  was  now  quit  of  it, 
well  might  Gibbon  mourn  over  him. — Nature,  I  say,  has  pro- 
vided amply  that  the  silent  great  man  shall  strive  to  speak 
withal ;  too  amply,  rather  ! 

Fancy,  for  example,  you  had  revealed  to  the  brave  old  Samuel 
Johnson,  in  his  shrouded-up  existence,  that  it  was  possible  for 
him  to  do  priceless  divine  work  for  his  country  and  the  whole 
world.  That  the  perfect  heavenly  law  might  be  made  law  on 
this  earth  ;  that  the  prayer  he  prayed  daily,  "  Thy  kingdom 
come,"  was  at  length  to  be  fulfilled  !  If  you  had  convinced 
his  judgment  of  this  ;  that  it  was  possible,  practicable  ;  that  he 
the  mournful  silent  Samuel  was  called  to  take  a  part  in  it ! 
Would  not  the  whole  soul  of  the  man  have  flamed-up  into  a 
divine  clearness,  into  noble  utterance  and  determination  to 
act ;  casting  all  sorrows  and  misgivings  under  his  feet,  count- 
ing all  affliction  and  contradiction  small, — the  whole  dark  ele- 
ment of  his  existence  blazing  into  articulate  radiance  of  light 
and  li ghtning  ?  It  were  a  true  ambition  this  !  And  think 
now  how  it  actually  was  with  Cromwell.  From  of  old,  the 
sufferings  of  God's  church,  true  zealous  preachers  of  the  truth 
flung  into  dungeons,  whipt,  set  on  pillories,  their  ears  cropt- 
off,  God's  Gospel-cause  trodden  under  foot  of  the  unworthy  : 
all  this  had  lain  heavy  on  his  soul.  Long  years  he  had  looked 
upon  it,  in  silence,  in  prayer  ;  seeing  no  remedy  on  earth  ; 
trusting  well  that  a  remedy  in  Heaven's  goodness  would  come 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

— that  such  a  coui'se  was  false,  unjust,  and  could  not  last  for- 
ever. And  now  behold  the  dawn  of  it  ;  after  twelve  years 
silent  waiting,  all  England  stirs  itself  ;  there  is  to  be  once 
more  a  Parliament,  the  right  will  get  a  voice  for  itself  :  inex- 
pressible well-grounded  hope  has  come  again  into  the  earth. 
Was  not  such  a  parliament  worth  being  a  member  of  ?  Crom- 
well threw  down  his  ploughs,  and  hastened  thither. 

He  spoke  there, — rugged  bursts  of  earnestness,  of  a  self-seen 
truth,  where  we  get  a  glimpse  of  them.  He  worked  there ;  he 
fought  and  strove,  like  a  strong  true  giant  of  a  man,  through 
cannon-tumult  and  ah1  else, — on  and  on,  till  the  cause  triumphed, 
its  once  so  formidable  enemies  all  swept  from  before  it,  and 
the  dawn  of  hope  had  become  clear  light  of  victory  and  cer- 
tainty. That  he  stood  there  as  the  strongest  soul  of  England, 
the  undisputed  hero  of  all  England, — what  of  this  ?  It  was 
possible  that  the  law  of  Christ's  gospel  could  now  establish 
itself  in  the  world  !  The  theocracy  which  John  Knox  in  his 
pulpit  might  dream  of  as  a  "  devout  imagination,"  this  practical 
man,  experienced  in  the  whole  chaos  of  most  rough  practice, 
dared  to  consider  as  capable  of  being  realized.  Those  that 
were  highest  in  Christ's  church,  the  devoutest,  wisest  men, 
were  to  rule  the  land  :  in  some  considerable  degree,  it  might 
be  so  and  should  be  so.  Was  it  not  true,  God's  truth  ?  And 
if  true,  was  it  not  then  the  very  thing  to  do  ?  The  strongest 
practical  intellect  in  England  dared  to  answer,  yes !  This  I 
call  a  noble  true  purpose  ;  is  it  not,  in  its  own  dialect,  the 
noblest  that  could  enter  into  the  heart  of  statesman  or  man  ? 
For  a  Knox  to  take  it  up  was  something  ;  but  fora  Cromwell, 
with  his  great  sound  sense  and  experience  of  what  our  world 
was, — history,  I  think,  shows  it  only  this  once  in  such  a  de- 
gree. I  account  it  the  culminating  point  of  Protestantism ; 
the  most  heroic  phasis  that  "  faith  in  the  Bible  "  was  appointed 
to  exhibit  here  below.  Fancy  it :  that  it  were  made  manifest 
to  one  of  us,  how  we  could  make  the  right  supremely  victo- 
rious over  wrong,  and  all  that  we  had  longed  and  prayed  for, 
as  the  highest  good  to  England  and  all  lands,  an  attainable 
fact! 

Well,  I  must  say,  the  vulpine  intellect,  with  its  knowingness, 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  215 

its  alertness  and  expertness  in  "detecting  hypocrites,"  seems 
to  me  a  rather  sorry  business.  We  have  had  but  one  such 
statesman  in  England  ;  one  man,  that  I  can  get  sight  of,  who 
ever  had  in  the  heart  of  him  any  such  purpose  at  all.  One 
man,  in  the  course  of  fifteen-hundred  years  ;  and  this  was 
his  welcome.  He  had  adherents  by  the  hundred  or  the  ten  ; 
opponents  by  the  million.  Had  England  rallied  all  round 
him, — why,  then,  England  might  have  been  a  Christian  land  ! 
As  it  is,  vulpine  knowingness  sits  yet  at  its  hopeless  problem, 
"given  a  world  of, knaves,  to  educe  an  honesty  from  their 
united  action  ; " — how  cumbrous  a  problem,  you  may  see  in 
chancery  law-courts,  and  some  other  places  !  Till  at  length, 
by  heaven's  just  anger,  but  also  by  heaven's  great  grace,  the 
matter  begins  to  stagnate  ;  and  this  problem  is  becoming  to 
all  men  a  palpably  hopeless  one. — 

But  with  regard  to  Cromwell  and  his  purposes  :  Hume  and 
a  multitude  following  him,  come  upon  me  here  with  an  ad- 
mission that  Cromwell  was  sincere  at  first ;  a  sincere  "  fanatic" 
at  first,  but  gradually  became  a  "  hypocrite  "  as  things  opened 
round  him.  This  of  the  fanatic-hypocrite  is  Hume's  theory  of 
it ;  extensively  applied  since, — to  Mohammed  and  many  others. 
Think  of  it  seriously,  you  will  find  something  in  it ;  not  much, 
not  all,  very  far  from  alL  Sincere  hero  hearts  do  not  sink  in 
this  miserable  manner.  The  sun  flings  forth  impurities,  gets 
balefully  incrusted  with  spots  ;  but  it  does  not  quench  itself, 
and  become  no  sun  at  all,  but  a  mass  of  darkness !  I  will  vent- 
ure to  say  that  such  never  befel  a  great  Cromwell ;  I  think, 
never.  Nature's  own  lion-hearted  sou ;  Antseus-like,  his 
strength  is  got  by  touching  the  earth,  his  mother ;  lift  him  up 
from  the  earth,  lift  him  up  into  hypocrisy,  inanity,  his  strength 
13  gone.  We  will  not  assert  that  Cromwell-  was  an  immaculate 
man  ;  that  he  fell  into  no  faults,  no  insincerities  among  the  rest. 
He  was  no  dilettante  professor  of  "perfections,"  "  immaculate 
conducts."  He  was  a  rugged  Orson,  rending  his  rough  way 
through  actual  true  work,  — doubtless  with  many  a  fall  therein. 
Insincerities,  faults,  very  many  faults  daily  and  hourly  :  it  was 
too  well  known  to  him  ;  known  to  God  and  him  !  The  sun 
was  dimmed  many  a  time  ;  but  the  sun  had  not  himself  grown 


216  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

a,  dimness.  Cromwell's  last  words,  as  he  lay  waiting  for  death, 
are  those  of  a  Christian  heroic  man.  Broken  prayers  to  God, 
that  He  would  judge  him  and  this  cause,  He,  since  man  could 
not,  in  justice  yet  in  pity.  They  are  most  touching  words. 
He  breathed-out  his  wild  great  soul,  its  toils  and  sins  all  ended 
now,  into  the  presence  of  his  Maker,  in  this  manner. 

I,  for  one,  will  not  call  the  man  a  hypocrite  !  Hypocrite, 
murmurer,  the  life  of  him  a  mere  theatricality  ;  empty  barren 
quack,  hungry  for  the  shouts  of  mobs  ?  The  man  had  made 
obscurity  do  very  well  for  him  till  his  head, was  gray  ;  and  now 
he  was,  there  as  he  stood  recognized  unblamed,  the  virtual 
king  of  England.  Cannot  a  man  do  without  king's  coaches 
and  cloaks  ?  Is  it  such  a  blessedness  to  have  clerks  forever 
pestering  you  with  bundles  of  papers  in  red  tape  ?  A  simple 
Diocletian  prefers  planting  of  cabbages  ;  a  George  Washing- 
ton, no  very  immeasurable  man,  does  the  like.  One  would 
say,  it  is  what  any  genuine  man  could  do  ;  and  would  do. 
The  instant  his  real  work  were  out  in  the  matter  of  kingship, — 
away  with  it ! 

Let  us  remark,  meanwhile,  how  indispensable  everywhere  a 
king  is,  in  all  movements  of  men.  It  is  strikingly  shown,  in 
this  very  war,  what  becomes  of  men  when  they  cannot  find  a 
chief  man,  and  their  enemies  can.  The  Scotch  nation  was  all 
but  unanimous  in  Puritanism  ;  zealous  and  of  one  mind  about 
it,  as  in  this  English  end  of  the  Island  was  always  far  from 
being  the  case.  But  there  was  no  great  Cromwell  among 
them  ;  poor  tremulous,  hesitating,  diplomatic  Argyles  and 
such  like  ;  none  of  them  had  a  heart  true  enough  for  the 
truth,  or  durst  commit  himself  to  the  truth.  They  had  no 
leader  ;  and  the  scattered  cavalier  party  in  that  country  had 
one  :  Montrose,  the  noblest  of  all  the  cavaliers  :  an  accom- 
plished, gallant-hearted,  splendid  man  ;  what  one  may  call  the 
hero-cavalier.  Well,  look  at  it ;  on  the  one  hand  subjects 
without  a  king  ;  on  the  other  a  king  without  subjects  !  The 
subjects  without  king  can  do  nothing  ;  the  subjectless  king 
can  do  something.  This  Montrose,  with  a  handful  of  Irish  or 
Highland  savages,  few  of  them  so  much  as  guns  in  their  hands, 
dashes  at  the  drilled  Puritan  armies  like  a  wild  whirlwind  -, 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  217 

sweeps  them,  time  after  time,  some  five  times  over,  from  the 
field  before  him.  He  was  at  one  period,  for  a  short  while, 
master  of  all  Scotland.  One  man  ;  but  he  was  a  man  :  a  mill- 
ion zealous  men,  but  without  the  one  ;  they  against  him  were 
powerless  !  Perhaps  of  all  the  persons  in  that  Puritan  strug- 
gle, from  first  to  last,  the  single  indispensable  one,  was  verily 
Cromwell.  To  see  and  dare,  and  decide  ;  to  be  a  fixed  pillar 
in  the  welter  of  uncertainty  : — a  king  among  them,  whether 
they  called  him  so  or  not. 

Precisely  here,  however,  lies  the  rub  for  Cromwell.  His 
other  proceedings  have  all  found  advocates,  and  stand  gener- 
ally justified  ;  but  this  dismissal  of  the  Rump  Parliament  and 
assumption  of  the  Protectorship,  is  what  no  one  can  pardon 
him.  He  had  fairly  grown  to  be  King  in  England  ;  chief  man 
of  the  victorious  party  in  England  :  but  it  seems  he  could  not 
do  without  the  king's  cloak,  and  sold  himself  to  perdition  in 
order  to  get  it.  Let  us  see  a  little  how  this  was. 

England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  all  lying  now  subdued  at  the 
feet  of  the  Puritan  Parliament,  the  practical  question  arose, 
what  was  to  be  done  with  it?  How  will  you  govern  these 
nations,  which  Providence  in  a  wondrous  way  has  given  up  to 
your  disposal?  Clearly  those  hundred  surviving  members  of 
the  Long  Parliament,  who  sit  there  as  supreme  authority,  can- 
not continue  forever  to  sit.  What  is  to  be  done  ?  It  was  a 
question  which  theoretical  constitution-builders  may  find  easy 
to  answer  ;  but  to  Cromwell,  looking  there  into  the  real  prac- 
tical facts  of  it,  there  could  be  none  more  complicated.  He 
asked  of  the  Parliament,  what  it  was  they  would  decide  upon  ? 
It  was  for  the  parliament  to  say.  Yet  the  soldiers  too,  how- 
ever contrary  to  formula,  they  who  had  purchased  this  victory 
with  their  blood,  it  seemed  to  them  that  they  also  should  have 
something  to  say  in  it !  We  will  not  "for  all  our  fighting 
have  nothing  but  a  little  piece  of  paper."  We  understand 
that  the  law  of  God's  gospel,  to  which  He  through  us  has 
given  the  victory,  shall  establish  itself,  or  try  to  establish  it- 
self, in  this  land ! 

For  three   years,  Cromwell  says,   this  question  had   been 


218  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

sounded  in  the  ears  of  the  Parliament.  They  could  make  no 
answer  ;  nothing  but  talk,  talk.  Perhaps  it  lies  in  the  nature 
of  parliamentary  bodies  ;  perhaps  no  Parliament  could  in  such 
case  make  any  answer  but  even  that  of  talk,  talk  !  Neverthe- 
less the  question  must  and  shall  be  answered.  You  sixty  men 
there,  becoming  fast  odious,  even  despicable,  to  the  whole  na- 
tion, whom  the  nation  already  calls  Rump  Parliament,  you 
cannot  continue  to  sit  there  :  who  or  what  then  is  to  follow  ? 
"Free  Parliament,"  right  of  election,  constitutional  formulas 
of  one  sort  or  the  other, — the  thing  is  a  hungry  fact  coming 
on  us,  which, we  must  answer  or  be  devoured  by  it !  And  who 
are  you  that  prate  of  constitutional  formulas,  rights  of  Parlia- 
ment ?  You  have  had  to  kill  your  king,  to  make  Pride's  pur- 
ges, to  expel  and  banish  by  the  law  of  the  stronger  whosoever 
would  not  let  your  cause  prosper  ;  there  are  but  fifty  or  three- 
score of  you  left  there,  debating  in  these  days.  Tell  us  what 
we  shall  do ;  not  in  the  way  of  formula,  but  of  practicable 
fact! 

How  they  did  finally  answer,  remains  obscure  to  this  day. 
The  diligent  Godwin  himself  admits  that  he  cannot  make  it 
out.  The  likeliest  is,  that  this  poor  Parliament  still  would  not, 
and  indeed  could  not  dissolve  and  disperse  ;  that  when  it 
came  to  the  point  of  actually  dispersing,  they  again,  for  the 
tenth  or  twentieth  time,  adjourned  it, — and  Cromwell's  pa- 
tience failed  him.  But  we  will  take  the  favorablest  hypothesis 
ever  started  for  the  Parliament ;  the  favorablest,  though  I  be- 
lieve it  is  not  the  true  one,  but  too  favorable. 

According  to  this  version  :  At  the  uttermost  crisis,  when 
Cromwell  and  his  officers  were  met  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  • 
fifty  or  sixty  Rump  members  on  the  other,  it  was  suddenly 
told  Cromwell  that  the  Rump  in  its  despair  was  answering  in 
a  very  singular  way  ;  that  in  their  splenetic  envious  despair,  to 
keep-out  the  army  at  least,  these  men  were  hurrying  through 
the  house  a  kind  of  reform  bill, — parliament  to  be  chosen  by 
the  whole  of  England ;  equable  electoral  division  into  districts  ; 
free  suffrage,  and  the  rest  of  it !  A  very  questionable,  or  in- 
deed for  them  an  unquestionable  thing.  Reform  bill,  free 
suffrage  of  Englishmen?  Why,  the  Royalists  themselves,  si- 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  219 

lenced  indeed  but  not  exterminated,  perhaps  ouinumber  us  ; 
the  great  numerical  majority  of  England  was  always  indiffer- 
ent to  our  cause,  merely  looked  at  it  and  submitted  to  it.  It 
is  in  weight  and  force,  not  by  counting  of  heads,  that  we  are 
the  majority  !  And  now  with  your  formulas  and  reform  bills, 
the  whole  matter,  sorely  won  by  our  swords,  shall  again  launch 
itself  to  sea  ;  become  a  mere  hope,  and  likelihood,  small  even 
as  a  likelihood  ?  And  it  is  not  a  likelihood  ;  it  is  a  certainty, 
which  we  have  won,  by  God's  strength  and  our  own  right 
hands,  and  do  now  hold  here.  Cromwell  walked  down  to 
these  refractory  members  ;  interrupted  them  in  that  rapid 
speed  of  their  reform  bill ; — ordered  them  to  begone,  and  talk 
there  no  more. — Can  we  not  forgive  him  ?  Can  we  not  un- 
derstand him  ?  John  Milton,  who  looked  on  it  all  near  at 
hand,  could  applaud  him.  The  reality  had  swept  the  formu- 
las away  before  it.  I  fancy,  most  men  who  were  realities  in 
England  might  see  into  the  necessity  of  that. 

The  strong  daring  man,  therefore,  has  set  all  manner  of 
formulas  and  logical  superficialities  against  him  ;  has  dared 
appeal  to  the  genuine  fact  of  this  England,  whether  it  will 
support  him  or  not  ?  It  is  curious  to  see  how  he  struggles  to 
govern  in  some  constitutional  way ;  find  some  parliament  to 
support  him  ;  but  cannot.  His  first  parliament,  the  one  they 
call  Barebones's  Parliament,  is,  so  to  speak,  a  convocation  of 
tJte  notables.  From  all  quarters  of  England  the  leading  minis- 
ters and  chief  Puritan  officials  nominate  the  men  most  distin- 
guished by  religious  reputation,  influence  and  attachment  to 
the  true  cause :  these  are  assembled  to  shape-out  a  plan. 
They  sanctioned  what  was  past ;  shaped  as  they  could  what 
was  to  come.  They  were  scornfully  called  Barebone's  Parlia- 
ment :  the  man's  name,  it  seems,  was  not  Barebones,  but  Bar- 
bone, — a  good  enough  man.  Nor  was  it  a  jest,  their  work  ;  it 
was  a  most  serious  reality, — a  trial  on  the  part  of  these  Puri- 
tan notables  how  far  the  law  of  Christ  could  become  the  law 
of  this  England.  There  were  men  of  sense  among  them,  men 
of  some  quality  ;  men  of  deep  piety  I  suppose  the  most  of 
them  were.  They  failed,  it  seems,  and  broke-down,  endeav- 
oring to  reform  the  court  of  chancery  !  They  dissolved  them- 


220  HEROES  AND  IIERO -WORSHIP. 

selves,  as  incompetent ;  delivered-up  their  power  again  into 
the  hands  of  the  Lord  General  Cromwell,  to  do  with  it  what 
he  liked  and  could. 

What  will  he  do  with  it?  The  Lord  General  Cromwell, 
"  Commander-in  chief  of  all  the  forces  raised  and  to  be 
raised  ; "  he  hereby  sees  himself,  at  this  unexampled  junc- 
ture, as  it  were  the  one  available  authority  left  in  England, 
nothing  between  England  and  utter  anarchy  but  him  alone. 
Such  is  the  undeniable  fact  of  his  position  and  England's, 
there  and  then.  What  will  he  do  with  it  ?  After  delibera- 
tion, he  decides  that  he  will  accept  it ;  will  formally,  with 
public  solemnity,  say  and  vow  before  God  and  men,  "  Yes, 
the  fact  is  so,  and  I  will  do  the  best  I  can  with  it !  "  Protec- 
torship, instrument  of  government, — these  are  the  external 
forms  of  the  thing ;  worked  out  and  sanctioned  as  they  could 
in  the  circumstances  be,  by  the  judges,  by  the  leading  official 
people,  "  Council  of  officers  and  persons  of  interest  in  the  na- 
tion :  "  and  as  for  the  thing  itself,  undeniably  enough,  at  the 
pass  matters  had  now  come  to,  there  was  no  alternative  but 
anarchy  or  that.  Puritan  England  might  accept  it  or  not ; 
but  Puritan  England  was,  in  real  truth,  saved  from  suicide 
thereby !— I  believe  the  Puritan  people  did,  in  an  articulate, 
grumbling,  yet  on  the  whole  grateful  and  real  way,  accept 
this  anomalous  act  of  Oliver's  ;  at  least,  he  and  they  together 
made  it  good,  and  always  better  to  the  last  But  in  their 
parliamentary  articulate  way,  they  had  their  difficulties,  and 
never  knew  fully  what  to  say  to  it! — 

Oliver's  second  parliament,  properly  his  first  regular  par- 
liament, chosen  by  the  rule  laid-down  in  the  instrument  of 
government,  did  assemble,  and  worked  ; — but  got,  before 
long,  into  bottomless  questions  as  to  the  protector's  right,  as 
to  "  usurpation,"  and  so  forth  ;  and  had  at  the  earliest  legal 
day  to  be  dismissed.  Cromwell's  concluding  speech  to  these 
men  is  a  remarkable  one.  So  likewise  to  his  third  parlia- 
ment, in  similar  rebuke  for  their  pedantries  and  obstinacies. 
Most  rude  chaotic,  all  these  speeches  are  ;  but  most  earnest- 
looking.  You  would  say,  it  was  a  sincere  helpless  man  ;  not 
used  to  speak  the  great_inorganic  thought  of  him,  but  to  act 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  221 

it  rather  !  A  helplessness  of  utterance,  in  such  bursting  full- 
ness of  meaning.  He  talks  much  about  "births  of  Provi- 
dence : "  All  these  changes,  so  many  victories  and  events, 
were  not  forethoughts,  and  theatrical  contrivances  of  men, 
of  me  or  of  men  ;  it  is  blind  blasphemers  that  will  persist  in 
calling  them  so  !  He  insists  with  a  heavy  sulphurous  wrath- 
ful emphasis  on  this.  As  he  well  might.  As  if  a  Cromwell 
in  that  dark  huge  game  he  had  been  playing,  the  world 
wholly  thrown  into  chaos  round  him,  had  foreseen  it  all,  and 
played  it  all  off  like  a  precontrived  puppetshow  by  wood  and 
wire  !  These  things  were  foreseen  by  no  man,  he  says  ;  no 
man  could  tell  what  a  day  would  bring  forth  :  they  were 
"  births  of  Providence,"  God's  finger  guided  us  on,  and  we 
came  at  last  to  clear  height  of  victory,  God's  cause  trium- 
phant in  these  nations  ;  and  you  as  a  parliament  could  assem- 
ble together,  and  say  in  what  manner  all  this  could  be  organ- 
ized, reduced  into  rational  feasibility  among  the  affairs  of 
men.  You  wrere  to  help  with  your  wise  counsel  in  doing 
that.  "  You  have  had  such  an  opportunity  as  no  parliament 
in  England  ever  had."  Christ's  law,  the  right  and  true,  was 
to  be  in  some  measure  made  the  law  of  this  land.  In  place 
of  that,  you  have  got  into  your  idle  pedantries,  constitution- 
al]'ties,  bottomless  cavillings  and  questionings  about  written 
laws  for  my  coming  here  ; — and  would  send  the  whole  matter 
in  chaos  again,  because  I  have  no  notary's  parchment,  but 
only  God's  voice  from  the  battle-whirlwind,  for  being  presi- 
dent among  you  !  That  opportunity  is  gone  ;  and  we  know 
not  when  it  will  return.  You  have  had  your  constitutional 
logic  ;  and  Mammon's  law,  not  Christ's  law,  rules  yet  in  this 
land.  "  God  be  judge  between  you  and  me  !  "  These  are 
his  final  words  to  them  :  take  you  your  constitution-formulas 
in  your  hands  ;  and  I  my  informal  struggles,  purposes,  reali- 
ties and  acts  ;  and  "  God  be  judge  between  you  and  me !  " 

We  said  above  what  shapeless,  involved  chaotic  things  the 
printed  speeches  cf  Cromwell  are.  Wilfully  ambiguous,  un- 
intelligible, say  the  most :  a  hypocrite  shrouding  himself  in 
confused  Jesuitic  jargon  !  To  me  they  do  not  seem  so.  I 
will  say  rather,  they  afforded  the  first  glimpses  I  could  ever 


222  HEROES  AND  HERO -WORSHIP. 

get  into  the  reality  of  this  Cromwell,  nay  into  the  possibility 
of  him.  Try  to  believe  that  he  means  something,  search  lov- 
ingly what  that  may  be  :  you  will  find  a  real  speech  lying  im- 
prisoned in  these  broken  rude  tortuous  utterances  ;  a  mean- 
ing in  the  great  heart  of  this  inarticulate  man  !  You  will,  for 
the  first  time,  begin  to  see  that  he  was  a  man  ;  not  an  enig- 
matic chimera,  unintelligible  to  you,  incredible  to  you.  The 
histories  and  biographies  written  of  this  Cromwell,  written  in 
shallow  skeptical  generations  that  could  not  know  or  conceive 
of  a  deep  believing  man,  are  far  more  obscure  than  Cromwell's 
speeches.  You  look  through  them  only  into  the  infinite 
vague  of  black  and  the  inane.  "  Heats  and  jealousies,"  says 
Lord  Clarendon  himself:  "heats  and  jealousies,"  mere  crabbed 
whims,  theories  and  crotchets ;  these  induced  slow  sober 
quiet  Englishmen  to  lay  down  their  ploughs  and  work  ;  and 
fly  into  red  fury  of  confused  war  against  the  best-conditioned 
of  kings  !  Try  if  you  can  find  that  true.  Skepticism  writing 
about  belief  may  have  great  gifts  ;  but  it  is  really  ultra  vires 
there.  It  is  blindness  laying-down  the  laws  of  optics. — 

Cromwell's  third  parliament  split  on  the  same  rock  as  his 
second.  Ever  the  constitutional  formula :  how  came  you 
there  ?  Show  us  some  notary  parchment !  Blind  pedants  : 
— "  Why,  surely  the  same  power  which  makes  you  a  Parlia- 
ment, that,  and  something  more,  made  me  a  Protector  !  "  If 
my  Protectorship  is  nothing,  what  in  the  name  of  wonder  is 
your  Parliamenteership,  a  reflex  and  creation  of  that  ? — 

Parliaments  having  failed,  there  remained  nothing  but  the 
way  of  despotism.  Military  dictators,  each  with  his  district, 
to  coerce  the  royalist  and  other  gainsayers,  to  govern  them,  if 
not  by  act  of  parliament,  then  by  the  sword.  Formula  shall 
not  carry  it,  while  the  reality  is  here  !  I  will  go  011,  protect- 
ing oppressed  Protestants  abroad,  appointing  just  judges, 
wise  managers,  at  home,  cherishing  true  gospel  ministers ; 
doing  the  best  I  can  to  make  England  a  Christian  England, 
greater  than  old  Rome,  the  queen  of  Protestant  Christianity  ; 
I,  since  you  will  not  help  me  ;  I  while  God  leaves  me  life  ! — 
Why  did  he  not  give  it  up ;  retire  into  obscurity  again,  since 
the  law  would  not  acknowledge  him  ?  cry  several ;  That  is 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  223 

where  they  mistake.  For  him  there  was  no  giving  of  it  up  ! 
Prime  ministers  have  governed  countries,  Pitt,  Pombal, 
Choiseul ;  and  their  word  was  a  law  while  it  held  ;  but  this 
prime  minister  was  one  that  could  not  get  resigned.  Let  him 
once  resign,  Charles  Stuart  and  the  cavaliers  waited  to  kill 
him ;  to  kill  the  cause  and  him.  Once  embarked,  there  is 
no  retreat,  no  return.  This  prime  minister  could  retire  no- 
whither  except  into  his  tomb. 

One  is  sorry  for  Cromwell  in  his  old  days.  His  com- 
plaint is  incessant  of  the  heavy  burden  Providence  has  laid 
on  him.  Heavy ;  which  he  must  bear  till  death.  Old  Colonel 
Hutchinson,  as  his  wife  relates  it,  Hutchinson,  his  old  battle- 
mate,  coming  to  see  him  on  some  indispensable  business, 
much  against  his  will, — Cromwell  "  follows  him  to  the  door," 
in  a  most  fraternal,  domestic,  conciliatory  style  ;  begs  that 
he  would  be  reconciled  to  him,  his  old  brother  in  arms  ; 
says  how  much  it  grieves  him  to  be  misunderstood,  de- 
serted by  true  fellow-soldiers,  dear  to  him  from  of  old  : 
the  rigorous  Hutchiuson,  cased  in  his  republican  formula, 
sullenly  goes  his  way. — And  the  man's  head  now  white ;  his 
strong  arm  growing  weary  with  its  long  work  !  I  think 
always  too  of  his  poor  mother,  now  very  old,  living  in  that 
palace  of  his  ;  a  right  brave  woman  ;  as  indeed  they  lived  all 
an  honest  God-fearing  household  there  ;  if  she  heard  a  shot 
go  off,  she  thought  it  was  her  son  killed.  He  had  to  come  to 
her  at  least  once  a  day,  that  she  might  see  with  her  own 

eyes  that  he  was  yet  living.     The  poor  old  mother  ! What 

had  this  man  gained  ;  what  had  he  gained  ?  He  had  a  life  of 
sore  strife  and  toil,  to  his  last  day.  Fame,  ambition,  place  in 
history  ?  His  dead  body  was  hung  in  chains  ;  his  "  place  in 
history," — place  in  history  forsooth  ! — has  been  a  place  of  ig- 
nominy, accusation,  blackness  and  disgrace  ;  and  here,  this  day, 
who  knows  if  it  is  not  rash  in  me  to  be  among  the  first  that 
ever  ventured  to  pronounce  him  not  a  knave  and  liar,  but  a 
genuinely  honest  man  !  Peace  to  him.  Did  he  not,  in  spite  of 
all,  accomplish  much  for  us?  We  walk  smoothly  over  his 
great  rough  heroic  life  ;  step-over  his  body  sunk  in  the  ditch 
there.  We  need  not  spurn  it,  as  we  step  on  it ! — Let  the 


22-4  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

hero  rest.  It  was  not  to  men's  judgment  that  he  appealed  ; 
nor  have  men  judged  him  very  well. 

Precisely  a  century  and  a  year  after  this  of  Puritanism  had 
got  itself  hushed-up  into  decent  composure,  and  its  results 
made  smooth,  in  1688,  there  broke-out  a  far  deeper  explosion, 
much  more  difficult  to  hush-up,  known  to  all  mortals,  and 
like  to  be  long  known,  by  the  name  of  French  revolution.  It 
is  properly  the  third  and  final  act  of  Protestantism  ;  the  ex- 
plosive confused  return  of  mankind  to  reality  and  fact,  now 
that  they  were  perishing  of  semblance  and  sham.  "We  call  our 
English  Puritanism  the  second  act :  "  Well  then,  the  Bible 
is  true  ;  let  us  go  by  the  Bible  ! "  "In  church,"  said  Luther ; 
"  In  church  and  state,"  said  Cromwell,  "  let  us  go  by  what 
actually  is  God's  truth."  Men  have  to  return  to  reality ;  they 
cannot  live  on  semblance.  The  French  revolution,  or  third 
act,  we  may  well  call  the  final  one  ;  for  lower  than  that  savage 
sansculottism  men  cannot  go.  They  stand  there  on  the  naked- 
est  haggard  fact,  undeniable  in  all  seasons  and  circumstances ; 
and  may  and  must  begin  again  confidently  to  build-up  from 
that.  The  French  explosion,  like  the  English  one,  got  its 
king, — who  had  no  notary  parchment  to  show  for  himself. 
We  have  still  to  glance  for  a  moment  at  Napoleon,  our  second 
modern  king, 

Napoleon  does  by  no  means  seem  to  me  so  great  a  man  as 
Cromwell.  His  enormous  victories  which  reached  over  all 
Europe,  while  Cromwell  abode  mainly  in  our  little  England, 
are  but  as  the  high  stilts  on  which  the  man  is  seen  standing ; 
the  stature  of  the  man  is  not  altered  thereby.  I  find  in  him 
no  such  sincerity  as  in  Cromwell ;  only  a  far  inferior  sort. 
No  silent  walking,  through  long  years,  with  the  awful  unnam- 
able  of  this  universe ;  "walking  with  God,"  as  he  called  it; 
and  faith  and  strength  in  that  alone  :  latent  thought  and  valor, 
content  to  lie  latent,  then  burst  out  as  in  blaze  of  heaven's 
lightning  !  Napoleon  lived  in  an  age  when  God  was  no  longer 
believed  ;  the  meaning  of  all  silence,  latency,  was  thought  to 
be  nonentity  :  he  had  to  begin  not  out  of  the  Puritan  Bible, 
but  out  of  poor  skeptical  "Encylopedies."  This  was  the 
length  the  man  carried  it.  Meritorious  to  get  so  far.  His 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  225 

compact,  prompt,  everyway  articulate  character  is  in  itself 
perhaps  small,  compared  with  our  great  chaotic  inarticulate 
Cromwell's.  Instead  of  "  dumb  prophet  struggling  to  speak,'' 
•we  have  a  portentous  mixure  oi  the  quack  withal !  Hume's 
notion  of  the  fanatic-hypocrite,  with  such  truth  as  it  has,  will 
apply  much  better  to  Napoleon  that  it  did  to  Cromwell,  to 
Mohammed  or  the  like, — where  indeed  taken  strictly  it  has 
hardly  any  truth  at  all  An  element  of  blamable  ambition 
shows  itself,  from  the  first  in  this  man  ;  gets  the  victory  over 
him  at  last,  and  involves  him  and  his  work  in  ruin. 

"  False  as  a  bulletin  "  became  a  proverb  in  Napoleon's  time. 
He  makes  what  excuse  he  could  for  it :  that  it  was  necessary 
to  mislead  the  enemy,  to  keep-up  his  own  men's  courage,  and 
so  forth.  On  the  whole,  there  are  no  excuses.  A  man  in  no 
case  has  liberty  to  tell  lies.  It  had  been,  in  the  long  run, 
better  for  Napoleon  too  if  he  had  not  told  any.  In  fact,  if  a 
man  have  any  purpose  reaching  beyond  the  hour  and  day, 
meant  to  be  found  extant  next  day,  what  good  can  it  ever  be 
to  promulgate  lies  ?  The  lies  are  found  out ;  ruinous  pen- 
alty is  exacted  for  them.  No  man  will  believe  the  liar  next 
time  even  when  he  speaks  truth,  when  it  is  of  the  last  impor- 
tance that  he  be  believed.  The  old  cry  of  wolf ! — A  lie  is  no- 
thing ;  you  cannot  of  nothing  make  something  ;  you  make 
nothing  at  last,  and  lose  your  labor  into  the  bargain. 

Yet  Napoleon  had  a  sincerity  :  we  are  to  distinguish  be- 
tween what  is  superficial  and  what  is  fundamental  in  insincer- 
ity. Across  these  outer  manceuverings  and  quackeries  of  his, 
which  were  many  and  most  blamable,  let  us  discern  withal 
that  the  man  had  a  certain  instinctive  ineradicable  feeling  for 
reality ;  and  did  base  himself  upon  fact,  so  long  as  he  had 
any  basis.  He  has  an  instinct  of  nature  better  than  his  cult- 
ure was.  His  savans,  Bourrienne  tells  us,  in  that  voyage  to 
Egypt,  were  one  evening  busily  occupied  arguing  that  there 
could  be  no  God.  They  had  proved  it,  to  their  satisfaction, 
by  all  manner  of  logic.  Napoleon  looking  up  into  the  stars, 
answers,  "  Very  ingenious,  Messieurs  :  but  ivho  made  all  that  ?  " 
The  Atheistic  logic  runs  off  from  him  like  water  ;  the  great 
fact  stares  him  in  the  face  :  "  Who  made  all  that  ?  ''  So  too  in 
Jfi 


226  HEROES  AND  HERO  •  WORSHIP. 

practice :  lie,  as  every  man  that  can  be  great,  or  have  victory 
in  this  world,  sees,  through  all  entanglements,  the  practical 
heart  of  the  matter ;  drives  straight  towards  that.  When  the 
steward  of  his  Tuileries  palace  was  exhibiting  the  new  up- 
holstery, with  praises,  and  demonstration  how  glorious  it  was, 
and  how  cheap  withal,  Napoleon,  making  little  answer,  asked 
for  a  pair  of  scissors,  clipt  one  of  the  gold  tassels  from  a  win- 
dow-curtain, put  it  in  his  pocket,  and  walked  on.  Some  days 
afterwards,  he  produced  it  at  the  right  moment,  to  the  hor- 
ror of  his  upholstery  functionary  ;  it  was  not  gold  but  tinsel ! 
In  Saint  Helena,  it  is  notable  how  he  still,  to  his  last  days,  in- 
sists on  the  practical,  the  real.  "Why  talk  and  complain, 
above  all,  why  quarrel  with  one  another  ?  There  is  no  result 
in  it ;  it  comes  to  nothing  that  one  can  do.  Say  nothing,  if 
one  can  do  nothing  !  "  He  speaks  often  so,  to  his  poor  dis- 
contented followers  ;  he  is  like  a  piece  of  silent  strength  in 
the  middle  of  their  morbid  querulousness  there. 

And  accordingly  was  there  not  what  we  can  call  a  faith  in 
him,  genuine  so  far  as  it  went  ?  That  this  new  enormous  de- 
mocracy asserting  itself  here  in  the  French  revolution  is  an 
insuppressible  fact,  which  the  whole  world,  with  its  old  forces 
and  institutions,  cannot  put  down  ;  this  was  a  true  insight  of 
his,  and  took  his  conscience  and  enthusiasm  along  with  it, — 
a,  faith.  And  did  he  not  interpret  the  dim  purport  of  it  well? 
"  La  carribre  ouverle  aux  talens,  the  implements  to  him  who  can 
handle  them  : "  this  actually  is  the  truth,  and  even  the  whole 
truth  ;  it  includes  whatever  the  French  revolution,  or  any  revo- 
lution, could  mean.  Napoleon,  in  his  first  period,  was  a  true 
democrat.  And  yet  by  the  nature  of  him,  fostered  too  by  his 
military  trade,  he  knew  that  democracy,  if  it  were  a  true  thing 
at  all,  could  not  be  an  anarchy  :  the  man  had  a  heart-hatred  for 
anarchy.  On  that  twentieth  of  June  (1792),  Bourrienne  and 
he  sat  in  a  coffee-house,  as  the  mob  rolled  by :  Napoleon  ex- 
presses the  deepest  contempt  for  persons  in  authority  that 
they  do  not  restrain  this  rabble.  On  the  tenth  of  August  he 
wonders  why  there  is  no  man  to  command  these  poor  Swiss ; 
they  would  conquer  if  there  were.  Such  a  faith  in  democracy, 
yet  hatred  of  anarchy,  it  is  that  carries  Napoleon  tlirough  all 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  227 

bis  great  work.  Through  his  brilliant  Italian  campaigns,  on- 
wards to  the  peace  of  Leoben,  one  would  say,  his  inspiration 
is  :  "  Triumph  to  the  French  revolution  ;  assertion  of  it  against 
these  Austrian  simulacra  that  pretend  to  call  it  a  simula- 
crum ! "  Withal,  however,  he  feels,  and  has  a  right  to  feel, 
how  necessary  a  strong  authority  is  ;  how  the  revolution  can- 
not prosper  or  last  without  such.  To  bridle  in  that  great 
devouring,  self-devouring  French  revolution ;  to  tame  it,  so 
that  its  intrinsic  purpose  can  be  made  good,  that  it  may  be- 
come organic,  and  be  able  to  live  among  other  organisms  and 
formed  things,  not  as  a  wasting  destruction  alone  :  is  not  this 
still  what  he  partly  aimed  at,  as  the  true  purport  of  his  life  ; 
nay  what  he  actually  managed  to  do  ?  Through  "Wagrams, 
Austerlitzes  ;  triumph  after  triumph, — he  triumphed  so  far. 
There  was  an  eye  to  see  in  this  man,  a  soul  to  dare  and  do. 
He  rose  naturally  to  be  the  king.  All  men  saw  that  he  was 
such.  The  common  soldiers  used  to  say  on  the  march  : 
"  These  babbling  avocats,  up  at  Paris  ;  all  talk  and  no  work  ! 
What  wonder  it  runs  all  wrong  ?  We  shall  have  to  go  and 
put  our  petit  Caporal  there  !  "  They  went,  and  put  him  there  ; 
they  and  France  at  large.  Chief-consulship,  emperorship, 
victory  over  Europe  ;  till  the  poor  Lieutenant  of  La  Fere,  not 
unnaturally,  might  seem  to  himself  the  greatest  of  all  men 
that  had  been  in  the  world  for  some  ages. 

But  at  this  point,  I  think,  the  fatal  charlatan-element  got 
the  upper  hand.  He  apostatized  from  his  old  faith  in  facts, 
took  to  believing  in  semblances  ;  strove  to  connect  himself 
with  Austrian  dynasties,  popedoms,  with  the  old  false  feudal- 
ities which  he  once  saw  clearly  to  be  false  ; — considered  that 
he  would  found  "  his  dynasty "  and  so  forth  ;  that  the  enor- 
mous French  revolution  meant  only  that !  The  man  was 
"  given  up  to  strong  delusion,  that  he  should  believe  a  He  ;" 
a  fearful  but  most  sure  thing.  He  did  not  know  true  from 
false  now  when  he  looked  at  them, — the  fearfulest  penalty  a 
man  pays  for  yielding  to  untruth  of  heart.  Self  and  false 
ambition  had  now  become  his  god  :  seZ/"-deception  once  yielded 
to,  all  other  deceptions  foUow  naturally  more  and  more.  What 
a  paltry  patchwork  of  theatrical  paper-mantles,  tinsel  and 


228  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

mummery,  had  this  man  wrapt  his  own  great  reality  in,  think- 
ing to  make  it  more  real  thereby!  His  hollow  Pope's- Con- 
cordat, pretending  to  be  a  re-establishment  of  Catholicism, 
felt  by  himself  to  be  the  method  of  extirpating  it,  "  la  vaccine 
de  la  religion  : "  his  ceremonial  coronations,  consecrations  by 
the  old  Italian  chimera  in  Notre-Dame — "  wanting  nothing  to 
complete  the  pomp  of  it,"  as  Augereau  said,  "  nothing  but  the 
half-million  of  men  who  had  died  to  put  an  end  to  all  that !  " 
Cromwell's  inauguration  was  by  the  sword  and  Bible  ;  what 
we  must  call  a  genuinely  true  one.  Sword  and  Bible  were 
borne  before  him,  without  any  chimera :  were  not  these  the 
real  emblems  of  Puritanism ;  its  true  decoration  and  insignia  ? 
It  had  used  them  both  in  a  very  real  manner,  and  pretended 
to  stand  by  them  now  !  But  this  poor  Napoleon  mistook  : 
he  believed  too  much  in  the  dupeability  of  men  ;  saw  no  fact 
deeper  in  man  than  hunger  and  this.  He  was  mistaken.  Like 
a  man  that  should  build  upon  cloud  :  his  house  and  he  fall 
down  in  confused  wreck,  and  depart  out  of  the  world. 

Alas,  in  all  of  us  this  charlatan-element  exists ;  and  might 
be  developed,  were  the  temptation  strong  enough.  "Lead  us 
not  into  temptation  !  "  But  it  is  fatal,  I  say,  that  it  be  devel- 
oped. The  thing  into  which  it  enters  as  a  cognizable  ingre- 
dient is  doomed  to  be  altogether  transitory  ;  and,  however 
huge  it  may  look,  is  in  itself  small.  Napoleon's  working,  ac- 
cordingly, what  was  it  with  all  the  noise  it  made  ?  A  flash  as 
of  gunpowder  wide-spread  ;  a  blazing-up  as  of  dry  heath. 
For  an  hour  the  whole  universe  seems  wrapt  in  smoke  and 
flame  ;  but  only  for  an  hour.  It  goes  out :  the  universe, 
with  its  old  mountains  and  streams,  its  stars  above  and  kind 
soil  beneath,  is  still  there. 

The  Duke  of  Weimar  told  his  friends  always,  to  be  of  cour- 
age ;  his  Napoleonism  was  unjust,  a  falsehood,  and  could  not 
last.  It  is  true  doctrine.  The  heavier  this  Napoleon  trampled 
on  the  world,  holding  it  tyrannously  down,  the  fiercer  would 
the  world's  recoil  against  him  be,  one  day.  Injustice  pays  it- 
self with  frightful  compound-interest.  I  am  not  sure  but  he 
had  better  have  lost  his  best  park  of  artillery,  or  had  his  best 
regiment  drowned  in  the  sea,  than  shot  that  poor  German 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  229 

bookseller,  Palm !  It  was  a  palpable  tyrannous  murderous  in- 
justice, which  no  man,  let  him  paint  an  inch  thick,  could  make- 
out  to  be  other.  It  burnt  deep  into  the  hearts  of  men,  it 
and  the  like  of  it ;  suppressed  fire  flashed  in  the  eyes  of  men, 
as  they  thought  of  it, — waiting  their  day !  Which  day  came : 
Germany  rose  round  him. — What  Napoleon  did  will  in  the 
long-run  amount  to  what  he  did  justly ;  what  nature  with  her 
laws  will  sanction.  To  what  of  reality  was  in  him  ;  to  that  and 
nothing  more.  The  rest  was  all  smoke  and  waste.  La  carribre 
ouverte  aux  talens :  that  great  true  message,  which  has  yet  to 
articulate  and  fulfil  itself  everywhere,  he  left  in  a  most  inar- 
ticulate state.  He  was  a  great  ebauche,  a  rude-draught  never 
completed  ;  as  indeed  what  great  man  is  other  ?  Left  in  too 
rude  a  state,  alas  ! 

His  notions  of  the  world,  as  he  expresses  them  there  at  St. 
Helena,  are  almost  tragical  to  consider.  He  seems  to  feel  the 
most  unaffected  surprise  that  it  has  all  gone  so  ;  that  he  is 
flung-out  on  the  rock  here,  and  the  world  is  still  moving  on 
its  axis.  France  is  great,  and  all-great ;  and  at  bottom,  he  is 
France.  England  itself,  he  says,  is  by  nature  only  an  append- 
age of  France  ;  "  another  Isle  of  Oleron  to  France."  So  it 
was  by  nature,  by  Napoleon-nature  ;  and  yet  look  how  in  fact 
— HERE  AM  I !  He  cannot  understand  it :  inconceivable  that 
the  reality  has  not  corresponded  to  his  program  of  it ;  that 
France  was  not  all-great,  that  he  was  not  France.  "  Strong 
delusion,"  that  he  should  believe,  the  thing  to  be  which  is 
not !  The  compact,  clear-seeing,  decisive  Italian  nature  of 
him,  strong,  genuine,  which  he  once  had,  has  enveloped  it- 
self, half-dissolved  itself,  in  a  turbid  atmosphere  of  French 
fanfaronade.  The  world  was  not  disposed  to  be  trodden  down 
underfoot ;  to  be  bound  into  masses,  and  built  together,  as 
he  liked,  for  a  pedestal  to  France  and  him :  the  world  had 
quite  other  purposes  in  view !  Napoleon's  astonishment  is 
extreme.  But  alas,  what  help  now  ?  He  had  gone  that  way 
of  his :  and  nature  also  had  gone  her  way.  Having  once 
parted  with  reality,  he  tumbles  helpless  in  vacuity  ;  no  rescue 
for  him.  He  had  to  sink  there,  mournfully  as  man  seldom 
did  ;  and  break  his  great  heart,  and  die, — this  poor  Napoleon ; 


230  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

a  great  implement  too  soon  wasted,  till  it  was  useless  :   our 
last  great  man ! 

Our  last,  in  a  double  sense.  For  here  finally  these  wide 
roamings  of  ours  through  so  many  times  and  places,  in  search 
and  study  of  heroes,  are  to  terminate.  I  am  sorry  for  it : 
there  was  pleasure  for  me  in  this  business,  if  also  much  pain. 
It  is  a  great  subject,  and  a  most  grave  and  wide  one,  this 
which,  not  to  be  too  grave  about  it,  I  have  named  "  Hero- 
Worship."  It  enters  deeply,  I  think,  into  the  secret  of  man- 
kind's ways  and  vitalest  interests  in  this  world,  and  is  well 
worth  explaining  at  present.  With  six  months,  instead  of  six 
days,  we  might  have  done  better.  I  promised  to  break-ground 
on  it ;  I  know  not  whether  I  have  even  managed  to  do  that.  I 
have  had  to  tear  it  up  in  the  rudest  manner  in  order  to  get 
into  it  at  all.  Often  enough,  with  these  abrupt  utterances 
thrown-out,  isolated,  unexplained,  has  your  tolerance  been  put 
to  the  trial.  Tolerance,  patient  candor,  all-hoping  favor  and 
kindness,  which  I  will  not  speak  of  at  present.  The  accom- 
plished and  distinguished,  the  beautiful,  the  wise,  something 
of  what  is  best  in  England,  have  listened  patiently  to  my  rude 
words.  With  many  feelings,  I  heartily  thank  you  all ;  and 
say,  good  be  with  you  all ! 


SUMMARY. 


»  LECTURE  I. 

THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.      ODIN,   PAGANISM  :    SCANDINAVIAN 
MYTHOLOGY. 

HEROES  :  Universal  History  consists  essentially  of  their  united  Biog- 
raphies. Religion  not  a  man's  church-creed,  but  his  practical  belief 
about  himself  and  the  universe  :  Both  with  Men  and  Nations  it  is  the 
One  fact  about  them  which  creatively  determines  all  the  rest.  Heath- 
enism :  Christianity :  Modern  Skepticism.  The  Hero  as  Divinity. 
Paganism  a  fact  ;  not  Quackery,  nor  Allegory :  Not  to  be  pretentiously 
"  explained  ; "  to  be  looked  at  as  old  Thought,  and  with  sympathy,  (p. 
5.) — Nature  no  more  seems  divine  except  to  the  Prophet  or  Poet,  be- 
cause men  have  ceased  to  think :  To  the  Pagan  Thinker,  as  to  a  child- 
man  all  was  either  godlike  or  God.  Canopus  :  Man.  Hero-worship  the 
basis  of  Religion,  Loyalty,  Society.  A  Hero  not  the  "  creature  of  the 
time:"  Hero-worship  indestructible.  Johnson:  Voltaire.  (11.) — Scandi- 
navian Paganism  the  Religion  of  our  Fathers.  Iceland,  the  home  of 
the  Norse  Poets,  described.  The  Edda.  The  primary  characteristic  of 
Norse  Paganism,  the  impersonation  of  the  visible  workings  of  Nature. 
Jotuns  and  the  Gods.  Fire  :  Frost :  Thunder :  The  Sea  :  Sea-Tempest. 
My  thus  of  the  Creation  :  The  Life-Tree  Igdrasil.  The  modern  "  Machine 
of  the  Universe."  (18.) — The  Norse  Creed,  as  recorded,  the  summation 
of  several  successive  systems  :  Originally  the  shape  given  to  the  national 
thought  by  their  first  "Man  of  Genius."  Odin  :  He  has  no  history  or 
date  ;  yet  was  no  mere  adjective,  but  a  man  of  flesh  and  blood.  How 
deified.  The  World  of  Nature,  to  every  man  a  Fantasy  of  Himself.  (24.) 
— Odin  the  inventor  of  Runes,  of  Letters  and  Poetry.  His  reception  as  a 
Hero  :  the  pattern  Norse-Man  ;  a  God  :  His  shadow  over  the  whole  His- 
tory of  his  People.  (29.) — The  essence  of  Norse  Paganism,  not  so  much 
Morality,  as  a  sincere  recognition  of  Nature :  Sincerity  better  than 
Gracefulness.  The  Allegories,  the  after-creations  of  the  Faith.  Main 
practical  Belief :  Fall  of  Odin  :  Valkyrs :  Destiny  :  Necessity  of  Valor. 
Its  worth  :  Their  Sea-Kings,  Woodcutter  Kings,  our  spiritual  Progen- 
itors. The  growth  of  Odinism.  (32.) — The  strong  simplicity  of  Norse 
lore  quite  unrecognized  by  Gray.  Thor's  veritable  Norse  rage  :  Balder, 


232  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

the  white  Sungod.  How  the  old  Norse  heart  loves  the  Thunder-God, 
and  sports  with  him :  Huge  Brobdignag  genius,  needing  only  to  be 
tamed-down  into  Shakspeares,  Goethes.  Truth  in  the  Norse  Songs : 
This  World  a  show.  Thor's  invasion  of  Jotunheim.  The  Ragnarok,  or 
Twilight  of  the  Gods :  The  Old  must  die,  that  the  new  and  better  may 
be  born.  Thor's  last  appearance.  The  Norse  Creed  a  Consecration  of 
Valor.  It  and  the  whole  Past  a  possession  of  the  Present.  (36.) 


LECTURE  II. 

THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.      MOHAMMED:    ISLAM. 

The  Hero  no  longer  regarded  as  a  God,  but  as  one  god-inspired.  All 
heroes  primarily  of  the  same  stuff  ;  differing  according  to  their  recep- 
tion. The  welcome  of  its  Heroes,  the  truest  test  of  au  epoch.  Odin : 
Burns,  (p.  43.) — Mohammed  a  true  Prophet;  not  a  scheming  Im- 
postor :  A  Great  Man,  and  therefore  first  of  all  a  sincere  man  :  No  man 
to  be  judged  merely  by  his  faults.  David  the  Hebrew  King.  Of  all  acts 
for  man  repentance  the  most  divine  :  The  deadliest  sin,  a  supercilious 
consciousness  of  none.  (44). — Arabs  described.  The  Arabs  always  gifted 
people  ;  of  wild  strong  feelings,  and  of  iron  restraint  over  these.  Their 
Religiosity :  Their  Star-worship  :  Their  Prophets  and  inspired  men  ; 
from  Job  downwards.  Their  Holy  Places.  Mecca,  its  site,  history  and 
government.  (48.) — Mohammed.  His  youth;  His  fond  Grandfather. 
Had  no  book-learning  :  Travels  to  the  Syrian  Fairs  ;  and  first  comes  in 
contact  with  the  Christian  Religion.  An  altogether  solid,  brotherly, 
genuine  man :  A  good  laugh  and  a  good  flash  of  anger  in  him  withal. 
(51.) — Marries  Kadijah.  Begins  his  Prophet-career  at  forty  years  of 
age.  Allah  Akbar  ;  God  is  great ;  Islam  ;  we  must  submit  to  God.  Do 
we  not  all  live  in  Islam  ?  Mohammed,  "  the  Prophet  of  God."  (53.) — 
The  good  Kadijah  believes  in  him :  Mohammed's  gratitude.  His  slow 
progress :  Among  forty  of  his  kindred,  young  All  alone  joined  him. 
His  good  uncle  expostulates  with  him  :  Mohammed ,  bursting  into  tears, 
persists  in  his  mission.  The  Hegira.  Propagating  by  the  sword  :  First 
get  your  sword  :  a  thing  will  propagate  itself  as  it  can.  Nature  a  just 
umpire.  Mohammed's  Creed  unspeakably  better  than  the  wooden 
idolatries  and  jangling  Syrian  Sects  extirpated  by  it.  (58. ) — The  Koran 
the  universal  standard  of  Mohammed's  life:  An  imperfectly,  badly 
written,  but  genuine  book  :  Enthusiastic  extempore  preaching  amid  the 
hot  haste  of  wrestling  with  flesh-and-blood  and  spiritual  enemies.  Its 
direct  poetic  insight.  The  World,  Man,  human  Compassion  ;  all 
wholly  miraculous  to  Mohammed.  (64.) — His  religion  did  not  succeed 
by  "  being  easy."  None  can.  The  sensual  part  of  it  not  of  Moham- 
med's making.  He  himself,  frugal ;  patched  his  own  clothes  ;  proved 


SUMMARY.  233 

a  hero  in  a  rough  actual  trial  of  twenty-three  years.  Traits  of  his 
generosity  and  resignation.  His  total  freedom  from  cant.  (69.) — His 
moral  precepts  not  always  of  the  superfinest  sort ;  yet  is  there  always  a 
tendency  to  good  in  them.  His  Heaven  and  Hell  sensual,  yet  not 
altogether  so.  Infinite  Nature  of  Duty.  The  evil  of  sensuality,  in  the 
slavery  to  pleasant  things,  not  in  the  enjoyment  of  them.  Mohammed- 
ism  a  religion  heartily  believed.  To  the  Arab  Nation  it  was  as  a  birth 
from  darkness  into  light :  Arabia  first  became  alive  by  means  of  it.  (72.J 


LECTURE  1IL 

THE  HERO  AS  POET.   DANTE  ;  SHAKESPEARE. 

The  Hero  as  Divinity  or  Prophet,  inconsistent  with  the  modern  prog- 
ress of  science :  The  Hero  Poet,  a  figure  common  to  all  ages.  All 
Heroes  at  bottom  the  same  ;  the  different  spJiere  constituting  the  grand 
distinction:  Examples.  Varieties  of  aptitude,  (p.  76.) — Poet  and 
Prophet  meet  in  Vates :  Their  Gospel  the  same,  for  the  Beautiful  and 
the  Good  are  one.  All  men  somewhat  of  poets  ;  and  the  highest  Poets 
far  from  perfect.  Prose,  and  Poetry  or  musical  Thought.  Song  a  kind 
of  inarticulate  unfathomable  speech :  All  deep  things  are  Song.  The 
Hero  as  Divinity,  as  Prophet,  and  then  only  as  Poet,  no  indication  that 
our  estimate  of  the  Great  Man  is  diminishing :  The  Poet  seems  to  be 
losing  caste,  but  it  is  rather  that  our  notions  of  God  are  rising  higher. 
(78. ) — Shakespeare  and  Dante,  Saints  of  Poetry.  Dante  :  His  history, 
in  his  Book  and  Portrait.  His  scholastic  education,  and  its  fruits  of  subt- 
lety. His  miseries:  Love  of  Beatrice:  His  marriage  not  happy.  A 
banished  man  :  Will  never  return,  if  to  plead  guilty  be  the  condition. 
His  wanderings :  "  Come  e  duro  catte."  At  the  Court  of  Delia  Scala. 
The  great  soul  of  Dante,  homeless  on  earth,  made  its  home  more  and 
more  in  Eternity.  His  mystic,  unfathomable  Song.  Death  :  Burial  at 
Ravenna.  (83.) — His  "Divina  Commedia  "  a  Song:  Go  deep  enough, 
there  is  music  everywhere.  The  sincerest  of  Poems :  It  has  all  been  as 
if  molten,  in  the  hottest  furnace  of  his  soul.  Its  Intensity,  and  Pictorial 
power.  The  three  parts  make-up  the  true  Unseen  World  of  the  Middle 
Ages :  How  the  Christian  Dante  felt  Good  and  Evil  to  be  the  two  polar 
elements  of  this  Creation.  Paganism  and  Christianism.  (87.) — Ten 
silent  centuries  found  a  voice  in  Dante.  The  thing  that  is  uttered  from 
the  inmost  parts  of  a  man's  soul  differs  altogether  from  what  is  uttered 
by  the  outer.  The  "  uses  "  of  Dante  :  We  will  not  estimate  the  Sun  by 
the  quantity  of  gas  it  saves  us.  Mohammed  and  Dante  contrasted.  Let 
a  man  do  his  work  ;  the  fruit  of  it  is  the  care  of  Another  than  he.  (95.) 
— As  Dante  embodies  musically  the  Inner  Life  of  the  Middle  Ages,  so 
does  Shakspeare  embody  the  Outer  Life  which  grew  therefrom.  The 


234  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

strange  outbudding  of  English  Existence  which  we  call  "  Elizabethan 
Era."  Shakespeare  the  chief  of  all  Poets:  His  calm,  all  seeing  Intel- 
lect :  His  marvellous  Portrait-painting.  (98. ) — The  Poet's  first  gift,  as  it 
is  all  men's,  that  he  have  intellect  enough, — that  he  be  able  to  see. 
Intellect  the  summary  of  all  human  gifts  :  Human  intellect  and  vulpine 
intellect  contrasted.  Shakespeare's  instinctive  unconscious  greatness : 
His  works  a  part  of  Nature,  and  partaking  of  her  inexhaustible  depth. 
Shakespeare  greater  than  Dante ;  in  that  he  not  only  sorrowed,  but 
triumphed  over  his  sorrows.  His  mirthfulness,  and  genuine  overflow- 
ing love  of  laughter.  His  Historical  Plays,  a  kind  of  National  Epic. 
The  Battle  of  Agincourt:  A  noble  Patriotism,  far  other  than  the  "  in- 
difference "  sometimes  ascribed  to  him.  His  works,  like  so  many  win- 
dows, through  which  we  see  glimpses  of  the  world  that  is  in  him.  (106. ) 
— Dante  the  melodious  Priest  of  Middle-Age  Catholicism  :  Out  of  this 
Shakespeare  too  there  rises  a  kind  of  Universal  Psalm,  not  unfit  to  make 
itself  heard  among  still  more  sacred  Psalms.  Shakespeare  an  "uncon- 
scious Prophet ; "  and  therein  greater  and  truer  than  Mohammed. 
This  poor  Warwickshire  Peasant  worth  more  to  us  than  a  whole  regi- 
ment of  highest  Dignitaries  ;  Indian  Empire,  or  Shakespeare, — which  ? 
An  English  King,  whom  no  time  or  chance  can  dethrone :  A  rallying 
sign  and  bond  of  brotherhood  for  all  Saxondom  :  Wheresoever  English 
men  and  women  are,  they  will  say  to  one  another,  "Yes,  this  Shake- 
speare is  ours!  "  (107.) 


LECTURE   IV; 
THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.     LUTHER  ;  REFORMATION  :    KXOX  ;    PURITANISM. 

The  Priest  a  kind  of  Prophet  ;  but  more  familiar,  as  the  daily  enlight- 
ener  of  daily  life.  A  true  Reformer  he  who  appeals  to  Heaven's  invis- 
ible justice  against  Earth's  visible  force.  The  finished  Poet  often  a 
symptom  that  his  epoch  itself  has  reached  perfection,  and  finished. 
Alas,  the  battling  Reformer,  too,  is  at  times  a  needful  and  inevitable 
phenomenon:  Offences  do  accumulate,  till  they  become  insupportable. 
Forms  of  Belief,  modes  of  life  must  perish ;  yet  the  Good  of  the  Past 
survives,  an  everlasting  possession  for  us  all.  (p.  111.) — Idols,  or  visible 
recognized  Symbols,  common  to  all  Religions :  Hateful  only  when  insin- 
cere :  The  property  of  every  Hero,  that  he  come  back  to  sincerity,  to 
reality :  Protestantism  and  "private  judgment."  No  living  communion 
possible  among  men  who  believe  only  in  hearsays.  The  Hero-Teacher, 
who  delivers  men  out  of  darkness  into  light.  Not  abolition  of  Hero- 
worship  does  Protestantism  mean  ;  but  rather  a  whole  World  of  Heroes, 
of  sincere,  believing  men.  (116.) — Luther;  his  obscure,  seemingly-insig- 
nificant birth.  His  youth  schooled  in  adversity  and  stern  reality.  Be- 
comes a  Monk.  His  religious  despair :  Discovers  a  Latin  Bible  :  No 


SUMMARY.  235 

wonder  he  should  venerate  the  Bible.  He  Tisits  Rome.  Meets  the 
Pope's  fire  by  fire.  At  the  Diet  of  Worms  :  The  greatest  moment  in  the 
modern  History  of  men.  (122.) — The  Wars  that  followed  are  not  to  be 
charged  to  the  Reformation.  The  Old  Religion  once  true  :  The  cry  of 
"  Xo  Popery  "  foolish  enough  in  these  days.  Protestantism  not  dead  : 
German  Literature  and  the  French  Revolution  rather  considerable  signs 
of  life  !  (130.) — How  Luther  held  the  sovereignty  of  the  Reformation 
and  kept  Peace  while  he  lived.  His  written  Works:  Their  rugged 
homely  strength  :  His  dialect  became  the  language  of  all  writing.  No 
mortal  heart  to  be  called  brater,  ever  lived  in  that  Teutonic  Kindred, 
whose  character  is  valor :  Yet  a  most  gentle  heart  withal,  full  of  pity 
and  love,  as  the  truly  valiant  heart  ever  is :  Traits  of  character  from  his 
Table-Talk  :  His  daughter's  Deathbed  :  The  miraculous  in  Nature.  His 
love  of  Music.  His  Portrait.  (132.) — Puritanism  the  only  phasis  of  Prot- 
estantism that  ripened  into  a  living  faith :  Defective  enough,  but 
genuine.  Its  fruit  in  the  world.  The  sailing  of  the  Mayflower  from 
Delft  Haven  the  beginning  of  American  Saxondom.  In  the  history  of 
Scotland  properly  but  one  epoch  of  world -interest, — the  Reformation  by 
Knox  :  A  "  nation  of  heroes ;  "  a  believing  nation.  The  Puritanism  of 
Scotland  became  that  of  England,  of  New  England.  (137.) — Knox 
"guilty  "  of  being  the  bravest  of  all  Scotchmen  :  Did  not  seek  the  post 
of  Prophet.  At  the  siege  of  St.  Andrew's  Castle.  Emphatically  a  sin- 
cere man.  A  Galley-slave  on  the  River  Loire.  An  Old-Hebrew 
Prophet,  in  the  guise  of  an  Edinburgh  Minister  of  the  Sixteenth  Cen- 
tury. (140.) — Knox  and  Queen  Mary:  "Who  are  you  that  presume  to 
school  the  nobles  and  sovereign  of  this  realm?"  "Madam,  a  subject 
born  within  the  same."  His  intolerance — of  falsehoods  and  knaveries. 
Not  a  mean  acrid  man  ;  else  he  had  never  been  President  and  Sovereign 
of  Scotland.  His  unexpected  vein  of  drollery :  A  cheery  social  man  ; 
practical,  cautious-hopeful,  patient.  His  "devout  imagination "  of  a 
Theocracy,  or  Government  of  God.  Hildebrand  wished  a  Theocracy  ; 
Cromwell  wished  it,  fought  for  it :  Mohammed  attained  it.  In  one 
form  or  other,  it  is  the  one  thing  to  be  struggled  for.  (143.) 


LECTURE  V. 
THE  HERO   AS    MAN    OF  LETTERS.      JOHXSON,   ROUSSEAU,    BURKS. 

The  Hero  as  Man  of  Letters  altogether  a  product  of  these  new  ages : 
A  Heroic  Soul  in  very  strange  guise.  Literary  men  ;  genuine  and  spuri- 
ous. Fichte's  "Divine  Idea  of  the  World :  "  His  notion  of  the  Truo  Man 
of  Letters.  Goethe,  the  Pattern  Literary  Hero. (p.  147.) — The  disorganized 
condition  of  Literature,  the  summary  of  all  other  modern  disorganiza- 
tions. The  Writer  of  a  true  Book  our  true  modern  Preacher.  Miracu- 


236  HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

lous  influence  of  Books  :  The  Hebrew  Bible.  Books  are  now  our  actual 
University,  our  Church,  our  Parliament.  With  Books,  Democracy  is 
inevitable.  Thought  the  true  thaumaturgic  influence,  by  which  man 
works  all  things  whatsoever.  (151.) — Organization  of  the  "Literary 
Guild:"  Needful  discipline;  "priceless  lessons"  of  Poverty.  The 
Literary  Priesthood,  and  its  importance  to  society.  Chinese  Literary 
Governors.  Fallen  into  strange  times ;  and  strange  things  need  to  be 
speculated  upon.  (157.) — An  age  of  Skepticism  :  The  very  possibility  of 
Heroism  formally  abnegated.  Benthamism  an  eyeless  Heroism.  Skep- 
ticism, Spiritual  Paralysis,  Insincerity  :  Heroes  gone-out ;  Quacks  come 
in.  Our  brave  Chatham  himself  lived  the  strangest  mimetic  life  all 
along.  .Violent  remedial  revulsions :  Chartisms,  French  Revolutions : 
The  Age  of  Skepticism  passing  away.  Let  each  Man  look  to  the  mend- 
ing of  his  own  Life.  (162.) — Johnson  one  of  our  Great  English  Souls. 
His  miserable  Youth  and  Hypochondria:  Stubborn  Self-help.  His 
loyal  submission  to  what  is  really  higher  than  himself.  How  he  stood 
by  the  old  Formulas :  Not  less  original  for  that.  Formulas  ;  their  Use 
and  Abuse.  Johnson's  unconscious  sincerity.  His  Twofold  Gospel,  a 
kind  of  Moral  Prudence  and  clear  Hatred  of  Cant.  His  writings  sincere 
and  full  of  substance.  Architectural  nobleness  of  his  Dictionary.  Eos- 
well,  with  all  his  faults,  a  true  hero-worshipper  of  a  true  Hero.  (169.) — 
Rousseau  a  morbid,  excitable,  spasmodic  man;  intense  rather  than 
strong.  Had  not  the  invaluable  "talent  of  Silence."  His  Face,  ex- 
pressive of  his  character.  His  Egoism  :  Hungry  for  the  praises  of  men. 
His  books  :  Passionate  appeals,  which  did  once  more  struggle  towards 
Reality :  A  Prophet  to  his  Time  ;  as  he  could,  and  as  the  Time  could. 
Rosepink,  and  artificial  bedizenment.  Fretted,  exasperated,  till  the 
heart  of  him  went  mad :  He  could  be  cooped,  starving,  into  garrets ; 
laughed  at  as  a  maniac  ;  but  he  could  not  be  hindered  from  setting  the 
world  on  fire.  (175.) — Burns  a  genuine  Hero,  in  a  withered,  unbeliev- 
ing, secondhand  Century.  The  largest  soul  of  all  the  British  lands, 
came  among  us  in  the  shape  of  a  hard-handed  Scottish  Peasant.  His 
heroic  Father  and  Mother,  and  their  sore  struggle  through  life.  His 
rough  untutored  dialect :  Affectionate  joyousness.  His  writings  a  poor 
fragment  of  him.  His  conversational  gifts :  High  duchesses  and  low 
ostlers  alike  fascinated  by  him.  (178.) — Resemblance  between  Burns 
and  Mirabeau.  Official  Superiors  :  The  greatest  "  thinking-faculty  "  in 
this  land  superciliously  dispensed  with.  Hero-worship  under  strange 
conditions.  The  notablest  phasis  of  Btirns's  history  his  visit  to  Edin- 
burgh. For  one  man  who  can  stand  prosperity,  there  are  a  hundred 
that  will  stand  adversity.  Literary  Liouism.-  (182.) 


SUMMARY.  237 


LECTURE  VI. 

THE    HERO     AS     KING.       CROMWELL,     NAPOLEON  :     MODERN     REVOLU- 
TIONISM. 

The  King  the  most  important  of  Great  Men  ;  the  summary  of  all  the 
various  figures  of  Heroism.  To  enthrone  the  Ablest  Man,  the  true  busi- 
ness of  all  Social  procedure  :  The  ideal  of  Constitutions.  Tolerable  and 
intolerable  approximation.  Divine  Rights  and  Diabolic  Wrongs. 
(p.  185.) — The  world's  sad  predicament  ;  that  of  having  its  Able-Man  to 
8&k,  and  not  knowing  in  what  manner  to  proceed  about  it.  The  era  of 
Modern  Revolution  dates  from  Luther.  The  French  Revolution  no 
mere  act  of  General  Insanity :  Truth  clad  in  hell-fire  ;  the  Trump  of 
Doom  to  Plausibilities  and  empty  Routine.  The  cry  of  '•  Liberty  and 
Equality  "  at  bottom  the  repudiation  of  sham  Heroes.  Hero-worship 
exists  forever  and  everywhere  ;  from  divine  adoration  down  to  the 
common  courtesies  of  man  and  man :  The  Soul  of  Order,  to  which  all 
things,  Revolutions  included,  work.  Some  Cromwell  or  Napoleon  the 
necessary  finish  of  a  Sansculottism.  The  manner  in  which  Kings  were 
made,  and  Kingship  itself  first  took  rise.  (189.) — Puritanism  a  section  of 
the  universal  war  of  Belief  against  Make-believe.  Laud  a  weak  ill- 
starred  Pedant ;  in  his  spasmodic  vehemence  heeding  no  voice  of  pru- 
dence, no  cry  of  pity.  Universal  necessity  for  true  Forms :  How  to 
distinguish  between  True  and  False.  The  nakedest  Reality  preferable 
to  any  empty  Semblance,  however  dignified.  (193.) — The  work  of  the 
Puritans.  The  Sceptical  Eighteenth  century,  and  its  constitutional 
estimate  of  Cromwell  and  his  associates.  No  wish  to  disparage  such 
characters  as  Hampden,  Eliot,  Pym  ;  a  most  constitutional,  unblamable, 
dignified  set  of  men.  The  rugged  outcast  Cromwell,  the  man  of  them 
all  in  whom  one  still  finds  human  stuff.  The  One  thing  worth  revolt- 
ing for.  (196.) — Cromwell's  "hypocrisy,"  an  impossible  theory.  His 
pious  Life  as  a  Farmer  until  forty  years  of  age.  His  public  successes 
honest  successes  of  a  brave  man.  His  participation  in  the  King's  death 
no  ground  of  condemnation.  His  eye  for  facts  no  hypocrite's  gift.  His 
Ironsides  the  embodiment  of  this  insight  of  his.  (200.) — Know  the  men 
that  may  be  trusted  :  Alas,  this  is  yet,  in  these  days,  very  far  from  us. 
Cromwell's  hypochondria  :  His  reputed  confusion  of  speech  :  His  habit 
of  prayer.  His  speeches  unpremeditated  and  full  of  meaning.  His 
reticences  ;  called  "  lying  "  and  "  dissimulation  :  "  Not  one  falsehood 
proved  against  him.  (209.) — Foolish  charge  of  "ambition."  The  great 
Empire  of  Silence  :  Noble  silent  men,  scattered  here  and  there,  each  in 
his  department ;  silently  thinking,  silently  hoping,  silently  working. 


238  HEROES  AND  HERO  -  WORSHIP. 

Two  kinds  of  ambition  ;  one  wholly  blamable,  the  other  laudable,  in« 
evitable  :  How  it  actually  was  with  Cromwell.  (211.) — Hume's  Fanatic- 
Hypocrite  theory.  How  indispensable  everywhere  a  King  is,  in  all 
movements  of  men.  Cromwell  as  King  of  Puritanism,  of  England. 
Constitutional  palaver  ;  Dismissal  of  the  Rump  Parliaments.  Crom- 
well's Parliaments  and  Protectorship  :  Parliaments  having  failed,  there 
remained  nothing  for  him  but  the  way  of  Despotism.  His  closing  days  ; 
His  poor  old  Mother.  It  was  not  to  men's  judgments  that  he  appealed  ; 
nor  have  men  judged  him  very  well.  (215.) — The  French  Revolution, 
the  "  third  act"  of  Protestantism.  Napoleon,  infected  with  the  quack- 
eries of  his  age  :  Had  a  kind  of  sincerity, — an  instinct  towards  the  prac- 
tical. His  faith, — "  the  Tools  to  him  that  can  handle  them,"  the  whole 
truth  of  Democracy.  His  heart-hatred  of  Anarchy.  Finally,  his  quack- 
eries got  the  upper  hand:  He  would  found  a  "Dynasty:"  Believed 
wholly  in  the  dupeability  of  men.  This  Napoleonism  was  unjust,  a 
falsehood,  and  could  not  last.  (224.) 


INDEX. 


Agincourt,  Shakespeare's  battle  of,  106. 

Ail,  young,  Mohammed's  kinsman  and  con- 
vert, 58. 

Allegory,  the  sportful  shadow  of  earnest 
Faith",  7,  33. 

Ambition,  foolish  charge  of,  210  ;  laudable 
ambition,  213. 

Arabia  and  the  Arabs,  48. 

B. 

Balder,  the  white  Snngod,  21,  37. 

Belief,  the  true  god-announcing  miracle,  66, 
75,  138,  1(55  ;  war  of,  193.  See  Religion, 
Skepticism. 

Benthamism,  74, 164. 

Books,  miraculous  influence  of,  153,  157 ; 
our  modern  University,  Church  and  Par- 
liament, 153. 

Boswell,  175. 

Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress,  10. 

Burns,  179;  his  birth,  and  humble  heroic 
parents,  180 ;  rustic  dialect,  180 ;  the 
most  gifted  British  soul  of  his  century, 
181  ;  resemblance  to  Mirabeau,  182;  his 
sincerity,  183;  his  visit  to  Edinburgh, 
Lion-hunted  to  death,  184. 

C. 

Caabah.  the,  with  its  Black  Stone  and  sacred 
Well,  50. 

Canopus,  worship  of,  13. 

Charles  I.  fatally  incapable  of  being  dealt 
with,  203. 

China,  literary  governors  of,  161. 

Church.     See  Books. 

Cromwell,  197  ;  his  hypochondria,  200,  205 ; 
early  marriage  and  conversion ;  a  quiet 
farmer,  201 ;  his  Ironsides,  202 ;  his 
Speeches,  208,  221 ;  his  "  ambition  "  and 
the  like,  209  ;  dismisses  the  Bump  Parlia- 
ment, 217  ;  Protectorship  and  Parliamen- 
tary Futilities,  219;  his  last  days,  and 
closing  sorrows,  223. 

D. 

Dante,  83 ;  biography  in  his  Book  and  Por- 
trait. 84  ;  his  birth,  education  and  early 
career,  84 ;  love  for  Beatrice,  unhappy 
marriage,  banishment,  85 ;  unconrtier- 
like  ways,  86;  death,  88;  his  "  Divina 
Commedia "  genuinely  a  song,  89 ;  the 
Unseen  World,  as  figured  in  the  Chris- 
tianity of  the  Middle  Ages,  94  ;  "  uses" 
of  Dante,  97. 


David,  the  Hebrew  King,  47. 
Divine  Right  of  Kings,  187. 
Duty,  33,  64 ;  infinite  nature  of,  75 ;  skeptl 
cal  spiritual  paralysis,  162. 


E. 


Edda,  the  Scandinavian,  19. 

Eighteenth  Century,  the  skeptical,  160-168, 

196. 
Elizabethan  Era,  99. 

F. 

Faults,  his,  not  the  criterion  of  any  man. 

47. 

Fichte's  theory  of  literary  men,  149. 
Fire,  miraculous  nature  of,  20. 
Forms,  necessity  for,  195. 
Frost.   See  Fire. 

G. 

Goethe's  "characters,"  101;   notablest  of 

literary  men,  150. 
Graphic,  secret  of  being,  90. 
Gray's  misconception  of  Norse  lore,  36. 

H. 

Hampden,  196. 

Heroes,  Universal  History  the  united  biog- 
raphies of,  5,  32 ;  how  "little  critics"  ac- 
count for  great  men,  17  ;  all  Heroes  fun- 
damentally of  the  same  stuff,  31,  44,  78, 
111,  147,  181 ;  Heroism  possible  to  ali,  183, 
13S ;  Intellect  the  primary  outfit,  103  ;  no 
man  a  hero  to  a  ratei-soul,  174,  197,  205. 

Hero-worship  the  tap-root  of  all  religion, 
13-19,  43;  perennial  in  man,  17,  82,  121, 
192. 

Hutchinson  and  Cromwell,  196,  223. 

I. 

Iceland,  the  home  of  Norse  Poets,  20. 
Idolatry,  116 ;  criminal  only  when  insincere, 

117. 

Igdrasil,  the  Life-Tree,  23,  99. 
Intellect,  the  summary  of  man's  gifts,  103, 

161. 
Islam,  56. 

J. 

Job,  the  Book  of,  49. 

Johnson's  difficulties,  poverty,  hypochon- 
dria,  169 ;  rude  self-help ;  stands  genu- 
inely by  the  old  formulas,  171 ;  his  noble 


240 


INDEX. 


unconscious    sincerity,   171 ;     a    twofold 
Gospel,  of  Prudence  and  hatred  of  Cant, 
173 ;  his  Dictionary,  174 ;  the  brave  old 
Samuel,  173,  213. 
JGtuns,  20,  37. 

K. 

Kadijah,  the  good,  Mohammed's  first  wife, 
53,  57. 

King,  the,  a  summary  of  all  the  various 
figures  of  Heroism,  185 ;  indispensable  iu 
all  movements  of  men,  215. 

Knox's  influence  on  Scotland,  138;  the 
bravest  of  Scotchmen,  140  ;  his  unassum- 
ing career ;  is  sent  to  the  French  Galleys, 
141 ;  his  colloquies  with  Queen  Mary,  143 ; 
vein  of  drollery,  144 ;  a  brother  to  high 
and  to  low,  144  ;  his  death,  145. 

Koran,  the,  64. 


Lamaism,  Grand,  8. 

Leo  X.,  the  elegant  Pagan  Pope,  128. 

Liberty  and  Equality,  122,  192. 

Literary  Men,  147 ;  in  China,  161. 

Literature,  chaotic  condition  of,  151  ;  not 
our  heaviest  evil,  1C2. 

Luther's  birth  and  parentage,  122;  hardship 
and  rigorous  necessity,  123;  death  of 
Alexis ;  becomes  monk,  124  ;  his  religions 
despair;  finds  a  Bible,  125;  deliverance 
from  darkness,  125  ;  Rome ;  Tetzel,  127 ; 
burns  the  Pope's  Bull,  128 ;  at  the  Diet  of 
Worms,  129;  King  of  the  Reformation, 
131  ;  "  Duke  Georges  nine  days  running," 
134 ;  his  little  daughter's  deathbed;  his 
solitary  Patmos,  135 ;  his  Portrait,  136. 

M. 

Mohammed's  birth,  boyhood,  and  youth,  51; 
marries  Kadijah,  54 ;  quiet,  unambitious 
life,  54;  divine  commission,  55;  the  good 
Kadijah  believes  him,  57 ;  Seid  ;  young 
Ali,  68 ;  offenses,  and  sore  struggles,  59 ; 
flight  from  Mecca ;  being  driven  to  take 
the  sword,  he  uses  it,  60  ;  the  Koran,  64 ; 
a  veritable  hero,  70  ;  Seid's  death,  71 ; 
freedom  from  Cant,  71 ;  the  infinite  nat- 
ure of  duty,  74. 

Mary,  Queen,  and  Knox,  142. 

Mayflower,  sailing  of  the,  130. 

Mecca,  50. 

Middle  Ages,  represented  by  Dante  and 
Shakespeare,  94,  97. 

Montrose,  the  hero-cavalier,  216. 

Musical,  all  deep  things,  82. 

N. 

Napoleon,  a  portentous  mixture  of  Quack 
and  Hero,  224  ;  his  instinct  for  the  prac- 
tical, 225 ;  his  democratic  faith,  and 
heart-hatred  for  anarchy,  226:  aposta- 
tized from  his  old  faith  in  Facts,  and 
took  to  believing  in  Semblances,  227  ;  this 
Napoleonism  was  unjust,  and  could  not 
last,  228. 


Nature,  all  one  great  Miracle,  10,  68,  134  ;  a 
righteous  umpire,  61. 

Novalis,  on  Man,  13 ;  Belief,  57 ;  Shake- 
speare, 104. 

O. 

Odin,  the  first  Norse  "  man  of  genius,"  24 ; 
historic  rumors  and  guesses,  14  ;  how  he 
came  to  be  deified,  27;  invented  "runes," 
29;  Hero,  Prophet,  God,  31. 

Olaf,  King,  and  Thor,  41. 

Original  man  the  sincere  man,  45,  121. 


P. 


Paganism,  Scandinavian,  6 ;  not  mere  Alle- 
gory, 9 ;  Nature- worship,  10,  32 ;  Hero- 
worship,  14  ;  creed  of  our  fathers,  18,  37, 
40;  impersonation  of  the  visible  work- 
ings of  Nature,  20 ;  contrasted  with 
Greek  Paganism,  22;  the  first  Norse 
Thinker,  24  ;  main  practical  Belief  ;  in- 
dispensable to  be  brave,  34;  hearty, 
homely,  rugged  Mythology  ;  Balder  Thor, 
41 ;  ConRecration  of  Valor,  42. 

Parliaments  superseded  by  Books,  156; 
Cromwell's  Parliaments,  217. 

Past,  the  whole,  the  postession  of  the  Pres- 
ent, 42. 

Poet,  the,  and  Prophet,  79,  97,  1C7. 

Poetry  and  Prose,  distinction  of,  81,  87. 

Popery,  131. 

Poverty,  advantages  of,  100. 

Priest,  the  true,  a  kind  ot  Prophet,  111. 

Printing,  consequences  of,  156. 

Private  judgment,  118. 

Progress  of  the  Species,  114. 

Prose.     See  Poetry. 

Protestantism,  the  root  of  Modern  European 
History,  118  ;  not  dead  yet,  132 ;  its  living 
fruit,  137,  188. 

Purgatory,  noble  Catholic  conception  of,  93. 

Puritanism,  founded  by  Knox,  137 ;  true 
beginning  of  Amet ica,  137 ;  the  one  epoch 
of  Scotland,  138;  Theocracy,  145;  Puri- 
tanism in  England,  192,  194,  213. 


Q- 

Quackery  originates  nothing,  8,  44  ;  age  of, 
166 ;  Quacks  and  Dupes,  205. 


B. 


Ragnarok,  40. 

Reformer,  the  true,  111. 

Religion,  a  man's,  the  chief  fact  with  regard 

to  him,  6 ;  based  on  Hero-worship,    13 ; 

propagating  by  the  sword    61 ;    cannot 

succeed  by  being  "  easy,"  62. 
Revolution,  186 ;  the  French,  187,  221. 
Richter,  13. 

Right  and  Wrong,  74.  94. 
Rousseau,  not  a  strong  man ;  his  Portrait ; 

egoism,  174  ;  his  passionate  appeals,  177 ; 

his  Books,  like  himself,  unhealthy  ;    the 

Evangelist  of  the  French  Revolution,  198. 


INDEX. 


241 


s. 

Skepticism,  a  spiritual  paralysis,  161-168, 
UK, 

Scotland  awakened  into  life  by  Knox,  138. 

Secret,  the  open.  78. 

Seid,  Mohammed's  slave  and  friend,  58,  70. 

Shakespeare  and  the  Elizabethan  Era,  99 ; 
his  all-sufficing  intellect,  99,  101  ;  his 
Characters,  101 ;  his  Dramas,  a  part  of  Na- 
ture herself,  104  ;  his  joyful  tranquillity, 
and  overflowing  love  of  laughter,  104  :  his 
hearty  Patriotism,  107:  g<impses  of  the 
world  that  was  in  him,  107  ;  a  heaven-sent 
Light-Bringer,  108  ;  a  King  of  Saxondom, 
110. 

Shekinah,  Man  the  true,  13. 

Silence,  the  great  empire  of,  97,  211. 

Sincerity,  better  than  gracefulness,  32  ;  the 
first  characteristic  of  heroism  and  origi- 
nality, 45,  55,  121,  122,  147. 

T. 

Theocracy,  a,  striven  for  by  all  true  Re- 
formers, 146,  214. 

Thor,  and  his  adventures,  20,  36-39 ;  his 
last  appearance,  41. 


Thought,  miraculous  influence  of,  22,  £0, 

158  ;  mvxiccU  thought,  81. 
Thunder.     See  Thor. 
Time,  the  great  mystery  of.  12. 
Tolerance,  true  and  false,  133,  143. 
Turenne,  77. 

U. 

Universities,  153. 

V. 

Valor,  the  basis  of  all  virtup,  33,  36  ;  Norse 
consecration  of,  42  ;  Christian  valor,  115. 
Voltaire-worship,  17. 

W. 

Wish,  the  Norse  god,   21  :  enlarged  into  a 

heaven  by  Mohammed,  76. 
Worms?,  Luther  at,  129. 
Worship,    transcendent   wonder,    12.    Sea 

Hero-worship. 


Zemzem,  the  sacred  well,  50. 


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